"The Earth is our Mother, we must take care of her. Hey yun ah hoya yun a hoy young young."

Want to know one of the best things about Lake Village this week that I didn't expect? We get to have chapel in the Deep Woods campfire ring. This is one of my favorite spots in all of camp and I didn't know they ever did. With four cabins from the Riv coming up each day we just fit better in this circle.

Sometimes Ellyn asks Keith to eat weird things like a cricket or a piece of bark. And then he does. So that's fun.

On Monday when you go to find your clinics everyone gathers together three different times and you get to see all your friends like Liz Koch and Smooney. That's really fun too.

I get Parent Letter time first period since this week we have to write 10 CILT PLs and 5 resident camp PLs. I love it. Today I got to write and think about Maddy Johnston for 45 minutes and it was pretty great.

Second clinic Ellyn and I teach friendship bracelets together. Best clinic ever? I think so. Today we taught our kids how to make the hardcore at the top of their diagonal bracelet. They're professionals already. We're not messing around in here this week.

Third period I'm with Kenzie for hip hop clinic. Hip hop always has and always will be on of my favorites. We decided to use a mash up of two songs that Krafty and I used a couple summers ago in our River hip hop clinic. It was easily my favorite dance we'd ever done and I'm stoked to teach it to these kids.

Barb is an integral part of Lake Village. She lives in Shoshone and is now one-armed Barb but we still really love her lots. This morning she was telling all her best jokes to Ellyn and Ellyn was just dying over them. Barb's the funniest.

We just made it back to the Longhouse for rest hour when there was a knock on the door. We opened it up to find Allie and Ashely from Session 1 CILTs. They were on their way back from Chicago and came to visit just for a minute. It was so good to see them. (But other CILTs from this summer don't get any ideas about showing up okay?)

The Warriors headed to the pool to meet the Blazers and I got to be the watcher at the top of the water slide. Alex, Jamie Z and Smooney were all guards in the Bradshaw pool which meant it was the first time all the CILT counselors were back together again.

My job was to send the kids down the slide one at a time and watch them get out at the right leader. One girl climbed up and said, "Hi Sarah! I'm Emily Parkes' sister Audrey!" I was SO excited because her sister Emily was one of my CILTs the past two weeks. I knew that she was at camp this week but didn't know how I'd find her. When they said that Sarah Wright was at the top of the slide she came there first so we could meet. Love her already.

After pop stop I made a water bottle run with Smooney but when we came around the corner I almost burst into tears, threw up and fainted all at the same time. You see we've been working on our water count all summer, staying hydrated and beating Lake Village. We just got to 20,000. But when we walked into today the counter read 111. What?! They replaced the filter this morning and now we're starting over again. We think we should put a sign next to it that says "+ 20,000."

On our way to the OT we had a little Wright Way story time with Ellyn.

Then it was time for the River Warrior Initiation. Nothing like a good mysterious, blindfolded task.

We met up with Hopi, Dots and Bagels back by Trader Jim's.

Then we did some stuff I can't tell you about because it's secret. But I can tell you everyone survived and it involved shrieking, swimming fish and face paint.

After a quick dinner and trading post stop, our cabin went out to the Oak Forest for Wilderness Rescue. A huge part of CILTs the past six weeks was facilitating team building challenges. It was so funny to watch a group of ten 13-year-olds work together to accomplish this task.

They had some awesome moments of planning ahead, encouraging one another, sharing responsibility, listening to ideas and being flexible. I'm glad we got to do this so early in the week.

Then it was time for our float trip with Mingo. This was the first time any of these girls had ever gone on a Tecumseh float trip so they were full of questions. We partnered up with the Mingo boys and then started paddling in the Tippecanoe River.

I got to sit in the middle of a canoe with Sam and Stella and listen to their stories. They were so good at spotting herons and giant rocks and jumping fish and weird water bugs.

One of my favorite parts of the day was just hanging out in the cabin with all of the girls tonight. I helped some of them make friendship bracelets, Hannah and Emma practiced signing, we ate lots of food and just talked for a long time. We talked about our families during devotions and I loved getting to know them better and hear about their lives at home.