Idaho hates me. It really does and here's why. All of my five efy weeks were scheduled at BYU except for the middle one when I was supposed to work at BYU-Idaho. This is a fine plan, except this is how the week went:
Sunday, I am driving along, minding my own buisness and listening to my book on tape, when Officer Carlton (or something like that) pulls me over, gives me a ticket and tells me to drive slower. Grrr. Fine so that one was my fault, but still, it was not a good start to the week.
Monday, we meet the kids. Everything is fine. They are the 14-15 age group, and really shy. They are all still trying to act cool. Two guys join our group later on in the afternoon, and I realized after some of my girls pointed it out to me, that when they arrived, they were high. Yes like on drugs, at efy. Good.
Tuesday, my co-counselor tells me that some of the guys were complaining about someone smoking outside their window. He also tells me that he is concerned because one of his boys told him that he had been disfellowshipped.
While I am on lunch duty making sure that no efy kids escape the lunch area, two of my girls came to tell me that last night they had been talking to some of the guys in our group on the phone the night before and they were talking about how they where smoking cigars and cigarettes in their apartment (at efy!). They were also telling my girls about the different kinds of drugs that they use at home. Great. Only one of the boys was sent home.
That night at the dance, my co-counselor had some kind of... something. We weren't sure what it was, but she was shaking uncontrollably. She was so sick afterward that she ended up spending all day on wednesday in her apartment.
Wendesday, one of the guys told me about how he had just gotten a call from his dad telling him that his nephew had been born during the night with a hole in his heart and they didn't know if he was going to live. He ended up getting sick for most of the rest of the week.
My BC (the person in charge of me, and the one that I go to when I have various problems) got sick and spent the day in the hospital.
Wednesday night is games night and because one of my co-counselors was sick and the other was on duty, I was left with 32 kids in a massive crazy mess, until my co got off duty. Not my cup of tea.
Thursday was good. Good stuff happened and I felt like I was doing something worthwhile. Oh, one thing that happened was that a 14 year old had been drinking tequila out of an IBC Rootbeer bottle. I guess she was totally wasted and was scaring her little 14 year old roommates. Because of other various events she and her roommate needed to be separated, so the roommate came to hang out with us in the counselor apartment. (This is efy people.)
Friday started out good, but some of my girls had to check out early, and then their ride arrived late, so i didn't get to say good bye to the rest of my kids. That was a bummer. While waiting for their ride to come I realized that I had lost my car keys. I freaked out with this horrified feeling of being trapped in Rexburg forever. I thought that I had locked them in my trunk so I found a nice mechanic to help break into my car. No keys in the trunk. I eventually found them in my backpack. I love/hate when that happens.
To top it all off, I was walking up the hill to try to find some of my group, when I got hit with a waterballoon. I was so stressed and tired that I started bawling right there in the street. I felt like a little kid that was lost in Wal-Mart.
These wonderful adventures as well as the usual, sassy girls, kids with bad attitudes, battling lights out, and acting as the modesty police filled my time in Rexburg. Good stuff happened too, of course, but the bad stuff sometimes has a way of screaming in your face and leaving a bad taste in your mouth.
I'm back! EFY was really fun. You can do crazy things as an efy counselor that you could never do anywhere else. I learned a ton about myself and other people. Each week definately had its ups and downs. One of the constant ups was that I always got girls that were good at lights out (more sleep for me!). One of the downs was eating food that tasted like my big toe dipped in ranch dressing. Here are some stories.
One week I had a girl from Saudi Arabia. When she would talk about her home she would say: "Back in Saudi we do it this way..." It was cute. She had grown up with some crazy stuff. She told me about one time when her house had been marked by terrorists because she was non-Arab and non-muslim.
The next week I had two sisters in my group. One of the girls was adopted from Haiti. They had 12 kids in their family and 4 were adopted.
Week three was my Rexburg week. I hope I never go to Idaho again.
My first week with the older group (16-18 years) was fun. I had some sassy girls that didn't want to be there, but I think they had a good time, and I got to be friends with them. That week we also had Miss Teen California in our group. She would walk around BYU campus in 4 inches of spike heels. Amazing.
My last week was fun because the group united really fast. We had an awesome group name- Thrash the Nations. On Friday we decided that we would celebrate everyone's birthday. We got a stereo going at lunch time and had a dance party that we called Club Thrash.
More pictures are posted on my efy blog, if you care to take a peek- tiffefy.blogspot.com
On Saturday, my friend Danielle and I participated in the Utah Fostercare Foundation's Chalk Art Festival. It was a part of the KSL Kids Fair at the Gateway. This was our third year doing it and I 
think it is our best one yet. It is a 6'x6' chalk drawing that took us almost 13 hours to complete. Towards the end of the day it was so hot that the pastels just kind of crumbled and almost melted onto the sidewalk. IT WAS SO HOT!
ng pictures of it. One person even asked us for our buisness card. To bad we didn't have one, drat! In the past, we have drawn Pinnochio, Cinderella, Van Gogh's Night Cafe, and a picture of a mountain lion.
