It's July in AZ and the A/C is out

Huff!

Other than that sweaty turn of events, this weekend/beginning of the week has been spectacular.

I got the chance to have an extended lunch on Sunday after LP with one of the students, Nichole. She'd recently moved back to town after living in WA for the past year. We hadn't been close previously but we stayed in touch via myspace and, oddly enough, bonded long distance.

As much as I love the huge group events, I absolutely thrive on the one-on-one face time that I get with them. I remember all too clearly what high school was like and it startles me how much I've learned just in the past 7 years. It's a unique perspective to listen to their problem and realize, with shock, that while I understand where they're coming from, I also have the added luxury of hindsight and knowing where I went wrong. They come to me for advice. It's pretty earth-shaking to a see someone watching you with eager eyes, drinking in your every word. You start to measure what you say a lot more. It's frightening and exilerating; they trust me simply because I have a couple years on them.

Tuesday I had the much anticipated, highly disorganized meeting with the LP Director about finally getting a drama team in place. We've worked on skits and sketches for the past two camps and I've had 5 of the students approach me separately about a more permanent team. They had a blast and did a friggin' outstanding job both times. Mae and I discussed what she wanted and then she printed out the lesson plans for the next few months so I could hatch out some ideas. I got the names and addresses of all the students interested and after I've sketched out some basic framework I'm going to contact them all.

I'm ridiculously excited.