BEDA 16: J'aime beaucoup le camp.

I helped out at camp today and have decided that those children are the most adorable things to happen to the world. I mean, one guy is major ladies man and he's all of six years old. There's also these two brothers who wear nail polish because their parents are apparently attempting to make a statement against gender roles. Another guy's father believes "that all food should have personalities" and draws faces on his bananas everyday. I also like that everybody running the camps are lovely people, especially Hannah, who is just a lovely person and John, who is a flamboyantly gay is all the best ways possible.

Today included sidewalk chalk, freeze dance parties to One Direction and a massive game of wink murder (in which I was first to die multiple times). I also saw several of my friends in a small play version of the war of 1812 which outdid my expectations*. Seeing eight people reenact the entire war of 1812 is entertaining in a odd way.

I actually just love camp so much. It's the best type of good chaos in existence.

I've come to this realization that despite the fact that I'm doing BEDA and labeling each of my posts with a number, I still can't remember what day it is.

Along with this, I'm going through a weird phase where I accidentally think the occasional random phrase in French, which is strange because my French abilities are really limited. I usually refrain from saying these aloud because when there are people around who actually speak French, I feel kind of like a pretentious poser. But I continue thinking with the occasional small snippets of French and I feel weird about it.

* I'm going to see again tonight not because I fangirl the war of 1812 or follow my theater kid friends around, but because I'm hanging out with people afterwards.
Love,
-J-

BEDA 15: Just your friendly August Christmas post

I went through my pictures from the last year and this will always be irrelevant to everything. So here you go.

I'm considering this thing this year where I might try to plan ahead for Christmas presents.

I've already started my own Christmas list (which so far contains one item: a quote dictionary). I've also started forming an evil plan this year where I will stealthily convince all my relatives to give me Starbucks gift cards so I can have Starbucks guilt free for a long time. I'm still drawing out my $25 gift card from last Christmas.

I kind of hate the fact that I'm socially obligated to give Christmas presents, the same way I hate that I feel socially obligated to go to prom. I'm not opposed to either idea, I just feel like they escalate into something far more frivolous than they need to be. In large doses, consumerism makes me uncomfortable.

For example, my dad's side of the family is really big on gift giving. Gift giving on a reasonable scale is lovely, but most of their stuff is acquired solely for the purpose of being acquired. Within several months, most of the gifts are forgotten about, in storage or given away. Some of my more distant relatives all seem to have massive collections of ranging obscure items and legitimately have multiple Christmas trees to put things under.

I go to their house over Christmas and roll my eyes. My parents see the above as pretty unnecessary way to celebrate the holidays as well. They go for more practical or thoughtful gifts and I didn't realize how thankful I was about this until lately. We're not very materialistic so this approach works well. I like that for Christmas I get socks, mittens, a calender, candy and a few small assorted things that my parents know I like, such as nail polish or scarves. I give them practical things like kitchenware (because they immediately abandon anything not practical) and they're pretty content with that. Being poor missionaries living in Kenya made my family so practical.

 I think that I'm going to go for homemade presents this year. Which means that I should start early and figure out what to do.

I can't believe I'm discussing Christmas in August.
Love,
-J-

BEDA 14: Casual monkey costume.

I was told to look casual. Hence the expression.

This week I realized I had an extremly small amount of things to do, so I asked a friend* if I could volunteer at some day camps for the kids' theater company that a bunch of my friends are involved with. I actually had a lot of fun because (1) these children were better behaved than choir camp kids and (2) the group of people running the camps were equal parts creative, chill and practiced at running camps. The building also amuses me, as it's in a former church but not completely church or theater company. In several place it looks like a theater company set up on top of the remains of partially decayed church apparel.

There was spy camp in the morning, which meant we had to create 'disguises' at one point so Hannah and I ended up in the monkey suits. I like the fact that I found so many ridiculous costumes that I could fit into. It was a unparalleled moment of joy, despite what you can tell from our faces.

*Actually, someone who is teetering on the edge between an acquaintance and a friend but after today I think I can safely say a friend.
Love,
-J-

BEDA 13: I have a buff left calf.

This morning, I hopped into a car at about quarter to eight and drove for an hour and a half to drop my brother off at a kind of camp thing for a week. My dad and I took the opportunity after we dropped him off to find a Christian bookstore to buy Dutch Blitz* and go to the local Value Village because thrifting** in different cities means an entirely new selection. After lunch of Indian food simply because we stumbled across a place that served Indian food, a thing which my life sorely lacks, we headed back home, me driving on the highway for most of the way with a fair bit of ease. When we got home, I then drove back across town for an appointment and got stuck in traffic for an annoying amount of time and witnessed someone aggressively run down several pylons in place of me. Construction season is the worst season.***

Tonight I went to see The Dark Knight Rises and it raises the question why this is the first superhero movie I've ever seen. It was so perfect. It helped that I was eating snuck in gummy cherry twists and waffle pretzels.

* Strangely which is available exclusively at Christian bookstores, despite having no relevance to Christianity whatsoever. Actually, to be honest, it's kind of a violent game. It just brings out the worst in people while being the best card game of all time.

** I've deciding to saw 'thrifting' more often because it sounds better than 'buying most of my clothes second hand because I'm cheap.' Out of the two, 'Thrifting' sounds infinitely more entertaining.

*** I presently blame whoever decided it was a good idea just to pave over streetcar rails instead of removing them several decades ago, only to have them discovered recently, causing extra hassle for the roadwork and causing me weeks of pain getting across town. However, my left calf is probably gaining a significant amount of muscle from hitting the clutch in stop and go traffic.
Love,
-J-