island living

i love working outdoors. seriously. it's great! this morning i sat down by the ocean before breakfast. i could hardly keep my eyes open because the sun was so bright and beautiful!
my day was filled with doing a natural history hike...snorkeling and teaching about fish...dissecting squid (and i tried eating the lense of the eye ball)...and leading a trust walk. we got two groups of kids in today, and it's the craziest week i've had so far. there are kids everywhere! we had two kids on the front deck tonight that were getting cactus pricklies pulled out of their arms and hands. whoops!

keep praying for my friend, sharayah. it's been a week since she got taken to the mainland, and her condition has not improved. they took the tube out of her today...and had to put it back in an hour later because she wasn't able to breathe on her own. i hope to go to the mainland friday to see her and give her mom a bit of a break.

alright...i'm off to bed. i'm enjoying life in a yurt. i'll have to throw some pictures in here of it sometime. it's fun :)

here's a few more...

oops....i meant to add these photos as well. these were all from two weeks ago in newport beach doing day camps there. they were precious kids! but it was an incredibly draining week.

island life

alright, so living on an island is tough, as you can see from these photos. :)

these were from my trip to avalon last weekend. what a cute little place. at times i felt like i was in a different world. maybe it was because the town was filled with golf carts. it was just so unique...like we were in some play-land or something.

so all of last week, i was working at camp in emerald bay, which is on the opposite end of the island from avalon. also a phenomenal place, but so much more secluded. but the views are unbelievable. it's so strange to me that i'm working on an island. never quite thought i'd do that. and it sounds like i'm going to be moving to the island for good...as in leaving the camp up in the mountains and working on the island for the rest of the season. i wasn't expecting it, but i'm definitely ok with it. i've got lots to learn though...because i'm more comfortable in the mountains, just because i've spent more time in them.

so i work with this awesome girl named sharayah. now, sharayah has had quite the last two months. she has been accident prone, to say the least. so this past wednesday night, all of the sudden her lip got super swollen. huge. then she started having trouble breathing. being in the middle of nowhere on an island, we called baywatch...which is the island way of saying that we called 911. they came...and longer story short, she ended up getting air lifted over to the mainland. so, it was midnight....the camp is full of sleeping children....and in comes this helicopter. and off she went. i was scared for her...she was going all alone...and this is her second helicopter ride to a hospital on the mainland in the past two months. she's an incredibly tough girl, and she nearly refused to go...but after some encouraging on our part...she decided to do it. and we were all so glad because they ended up having to intibate her (not quite sure if i spelled that one right), and she's still in the hospital. ian (one of the guys from the island) and i took the boat over yesterday to be with her.

so much has happened...and i know this is brief....but i just wanted to let ya'll know that i'm still here and i'm doing well :)

my cell phone doesn't work on the island...and email time is limited, but keep checking back in for the latest on life in southern california :)

much love,

brooke.

my week in newport

hey friends....
so, it's been quite a week. it wasn't hard to get used to driving to work down the pacific coast highway with the ocean right there the entire way! although it was kinda strange to pass by bentley and ferrari car dealerships on the way to work. definitely not something i'm used to! this place reeks of money. the other day, i was canoeing with some fifth graders, and they were talking about how the houses they live in were a couple million dollars. but the strange thing is that they weren't saying it in a bragging kind of way...it's like that was normal to them and each other. so that certainly isn't something i'm used to! needless to say, it was quite a different feel being in the newport beach/huntington beach area than up in the mountains. but i loved the fact that i was able to just go and enjoy the beach after work. it was absolutely beautiful!

i was doing day camp this week because the kids were on spring break. we spent a lot of time at the beach...we disected squid...talked about sea stars and whales and cool stuff like that. but it was quite a frustrating time. we had no clue what we were doing. we weren't prepared for it and hadn't received any traning on it, and they were completely different classes than we teach up at the mountain. there were times that i just felt embarassed because it seemed as though we were just throwing this thing together, which isn't a way to run an organization. i don't know how they function this way. but we pulled it off...and i think the kids had a good time. i just think it could have been done with more excellence. and we're all glad that the week is over.

so tomorrow morning i'm heading back to catalina island. i'm going camping with a group of people i've actually never met before, which should be fun. my friend kelly has a friend out here, and he asked me to come along. then...i'm going to be staying out on the island for next week and the following week to work at the camp there. i'm looking forward to it. i like the variety of it.

alright...well, i love you all...and those of you back in illinois...enjoy the snow for me. i'm struggling over here because i got sun burned this week. :)

easter on catalina

hello, hello...

well, i would say that this past week has been the best week i've had since being here in california. some of the MSA "islanders" came to help us out at the mountain...and it was just fun. fun to get to know them. it was the kind of fun where i laughed until my stomach hurt...and the kind of conversations where, at the end of the day, i was satisfied with my friendships here. it was great.

i'm in newport beach this week doing day camp. it was a choatic day because none of us really knew what we were doing. i don't understand how an organization can function this way...by not actually training their employees and making it so we can do the best job we possibly can. it's been frustrating.

i ended up going out to catalina island yesterday for easter. took the ferry in the morning and came back last night. it was fun to get to actually sit around a table and share a meal with people on this awesome holiday. i was thankful for that. plus, i didn't throw up this time on the boat....so that it always a bonus :)

just wanted to send a quick hello and a little update.

much love,

brooke.

oh how i love the ocean

well...i've been making my way around southern california, and this weekend i spent in santa barbara. beautiful place! quite wealthy, so it seems...but it's still gorgeous! on my way there, i witnessed my first california forest fire. when i was still a long ways off, i thought it was the most disgusting smog i had ever seen...then the closer i got, i realized it was indeed a fire. the smoke was rolling off the side of a mountain, and down onto the highway. (turns out it was the backside of the famous hill that the "hollywood" sign is on.) i later read in the paper that it was two teenagers from illinois that were on vacation with their parents...and they intentionally set the fire. man, those illinois people....what are we going to do with them?!

so anyway, my time in santa barbara was great. i love the location of the camp where i live...but i also love to get around and see things. and i can't quite seem to get enough of the ocean. (oh, i saw another whale!!) about four or five years ago...tristan, jessica, izzie, and i spent spring break with connie, a great friend of jessicas...and she just so happened to live in santa barbara. she's a great lady....and since then, i have sporadically kept in touch with her. once she found out that i was moving to california, she invited me to come visit. so of course i took her up on it! we took walks on the beach...ate meals at restaurants on the beach...walked around downtown sb...it was very refreshing and relaxing. a change of pace from the camp lifestyle. hey, and i got to watch the news for the first time in a month...that's the huge reason that i miss having a television.


well...my laptop battery is running low, so i better end this....i'm hanging out in riverside, cali at a barnes and noble. i'm checking out a church here, so i was just wasting time.

much love to you all....