Week Four... We're so Hardcore.

We have been here for an official month. Just starting to settle in. But of course, something just has to flip our world. No week of Kaleo can ever be "Boring". If you haven't already heard, the Kaleo girls got hit with a terrible case of bed bugs. This, was a truly terrible experience. It started with just one of the girls rooms finding bites. Soon after it was discovered in that room, two other rooms were finding bite marks. The maintenance crew then decided that all the rooms must have them. So the process of elimination had begun. They informed us that every girl on our floor needed to dry, freeze, and/or inspect every item that they owned. Now, please just take a second to imagine how much stuff I have. This was not my idea of fun. So one afternoon was spent at the laundromat in Duncan. Only 7 of us went the first trip, but we washed and dried alot of clothes. By the end of all my packing and moving, I had eleven bags of stuff. Now, I'm not just talking like shopping bags from the grocery store. These were the biggest sized garbage bags you can buy. I had alot of work ahead of me. But lets go back a bit. After we had sorted through all the clothes we owned and washed a good number of them, we realized that some of us had clothes that could not be put in a dryer on high heat for an hour. This simply would not do. So we complained, and asked questions, and pouted. Then they told us that they were bringing in three deep freezes. We were to put all the non-dryer clothes into bags and put them into the freezer. Unlike the dryers, which only took one hour, the freezer bags have to stay in there for two and a half weeks. That a long time! So basically, I have no pants for the next two and a half weeks. I am wearing all shorts! Oh joy.

Now we are just going to back track a bit. I think the last place that I left you was after my terrible adventure home for Nick's wedding. Well, you will be happy to know that I made it back safely. The only complication on the way back was that after flying from Kelowna to Vancouver I had to switch planes because the one that I was on was having mechanical problems. That would be my luck with planes. But, I made it back safely. I at least seem to be alive, and all is well, so I guess I can't complain there. I got back on Thanksgiving day (Monday) and was pleasantly surprised to hear that we were having a big thanksgiving dinner here at camp. The girls decided to dress up fancy for this occasion. So we put on our prettiest dresses, created our prettiest hair-do, and found our prettiest shoes. Basically, we wanted to look our prettiest after weeks of limited showering. The boys apparently had the same idea. They came in their dress shirts, and nice pants. Alot of them even showered and combed their hair. It was lovely. But of course, we couldn't look pretty forever. The next morning we set out bright and early to go on an adventure of caving, shopping, and swimming. Our group started in the caves. They were really cool and even kind of fun. Until we got near the exit of the cave. That's when Boyda (Nate) pointed out a spider to me. Then he pointed out the hundreds more that were in the little room. I freaked out, of course. After they laughed at me and sang "spiders come, Bria want to go home" I finally got myself out of the dingy darkness. I felt much better when I was outside in the safety again. Then it was off to Coombs for some local shopping. For those of you who don't know of Coombs, it's a small market-like area. They are well known because the main building is kind of like a grocery store and has goats on the roof of it. I bought a whirly-pop the size of my head at the candy shop there, but that's all the treasure I could dig up. When we got back we were all cracking down on our homework. Most people became hermits for the next few days in order to get our huge work-load taken care of. I, myself spent my entire Saturday in my bed just motoring through assignments. I got a huge dent of it done that day. It was a good thing for me to do. Friday night was our first DTG (Ditch the Guys/Girls) Night. Aka. The girls went on an adventure just as girls, and the boys did the same. The girls started the night by heading off to the local retirement home. We just hung out and talked with the ladies there. Then sang songs with them while Kristie played the piano. It was so fun, and good to see that in their veggie states they were still so full of life. After that we headed to a cute little coffee shop in downtown Chermainus. We got to get any drink we wanted and just chill and chat as girls. We ended the night at Kristie's apartment with a delicious Chicken and Shrimp dinner and lots of funny games. We had to sleep in our own beds at camp though out of fear of bed bug spreadation. They woke us up really early and brought us out to the climbing tower. We didn't quite know why, but as we climbed to the top we saw the beautiful breakfast that Kristie and Marissa had set out for us. It was wonderful. I think for a whole night we forgot that we were being attacked by bed bugs and just enjoyed life. As all of this craziness was going on we were having visitors. Boyda's sister Olivia came to visit us for his birthday on Saturday. So we got to enjoy her presences for the weekend. It was wonderful. Also, a girl by the name of Tanya came to live with us for about a week. She was going to take the Hemeneutics course with us, but something came up so she had to go back to Columbia earlier. We were sad to see her go, but God has plans. We are now fully into our Hermeneutics course, and I'm trying to grasp all that I can. Oh how the days pass, here at Kaleo. Miss you all.