on appalachia

i know we didn't cover this a ton, and it's hard for me to recap at this point, but teaching camp with joey and abby (sis) and being with heather and her fam was so fun again this year. each year i'm surprised at just how little you need a phone and internet, and how much fun it is to see something through new eyes again.

these kids we had this year were about 50% return campers and the other half newbies. some expected to learn improv and were so psyched about it, and the others who just learned the word couldn't stand how excited they were about it. that's the most fun. it's so much fun and good for me once a year to see kids like that get so excited and tell us they want to do what we do... it reminds me that i'm doing what iiii wanted to do.

joey also took on the laborious task of teaching the kids about shakespeare, which also was a real highlight of camp for me. the kids were excited about it, and though their reading level wasn't at it's highest, they took context and really ran with it. we made them write plays loosely based on overviews and those provided a lot of late night entertainment once we got home from camp.

we also saw a lot of camp maturity (and immaturity) this year. i played mama bear a lot to some seriously troubled kids, and some who just had a decent bout of stage fright. we also saw some of our first camp romances. it's safe to say that i lost my shit breaking a couple times watching kids fall in fake lii all week. the most important? kimberly and this kid, andrew. andrew, a cute toe-headed kid, short and freckled, ran up to me tuesday morning. miss tara? wanna see something crazy?, he said, to which i replied a resounding yes. andrew snatched a note from a girls pocket and brought it to me. joey and i read it together, silently:

dear andrew,

i love you. i want to marry you when you grow up. you are cute and cute and cute. you are my mane (sic) man. love, kimberly

kimberly, about three feet away, proudly waved.

iiiiii wrote that!, she screamed.

sidebar: when did we lose this fear of shame?

bring it back! sissssters are dooooing it for themselllllves!

as joey slinked away, i asked andrew what he thought of the whole thing. he didn't know, so i told him to think on it overnight. kimberly was in his car pool, after all (and just think of how awkward that gets)!

the next day, the couplehood was affirmed, and these two somehow ran the gauntlet of a LTR in the course of 3 days. it was my favorite entertainment of the week.

we did some standard activities this year - visited larry's (heather's dad's) land and saw how much had built out...ate a lot of casseroles and rhubarb cobbler...played pass the pig...ran to walmart for entertainment...made t-shirts as camp counselors...went down to get sno-cones at the Pioneer, the knock off DQ...watched abby and joey toss apples back and forth to sheer giddyness in the basement a few nights...the like. realized how much i love my friends.

and friends, isn't that what camp is all about?