Still alive

I survived my first day. We had 14 kids today. Most of the time they were decently well-behaved and overall I think we have a great group of kids. Brad was telling one of the unit leaders from the other 10-12 year-old group that we had great kids when one of them piped up and asked if we could have a mosh pit. That gave us all a good laugh! The other group has an autistic kid in it, so I'll take requests for mosh pits in stride and just tell him no. The bi-polar kid in our group seems like any other child, so I assume that he's on medication. If I didn't know I wouldn't suspect that he had any such condition.

This week's special activity is to invent a sport. The kids are supposed to take elements from two sports and combine them. Guiding the discussion was a headache and a half. I am sure we will have to try several times before we get a really good idea of what our sport will look like. We as leaders already had a chance to try inventing a sport of our own. It was a rainy day today so we couldn't go to the pool like we were supposed to and ended up in the parking structure below the building. The other 10-12 group came down there not long after we did, so Brad and one of the other leaders and I got together and started to invent our own version of human foosball that morphed into a combination of human foosball and water polo. We had fun coming up with the game and some of the kids really seemed to like it.

I was a bit apprehensive about working with kids all summer, but I like the kids overall. They are in some strange years. We've got a few really small kids and one who is about as big as I am. They are in that age when they should probably start wearing deodorant and don't yet, so after some time in a hot room it starts to smell like pre-teen sweat. Nice. I talked to them, played games with them, and raised my voice with them when they were having some trouble listening to what I told them to do. I think it is going to be a good experience for me.