Katelyn comes to town.

My good friend Katelyn came to visit me this past weekend. It was so good to see a familiar face from home. She had only been to the Charleston area once before, so it was great to play tour guide for the weekend. She came in late Friday night, so we stayed with my aunt in Charleston and ate some great food...mmm. Then Saturday we spent the day downtown looking at shoppes and visiting the village markets. We took a stroll down Rainbow Row and visited the big Pineapple fountain. We saw a beatiful sunset on the beach Saturday night, then I gave Katelyn a camp tour, including a visit to the Herpetarium where she met all of our snakes and alligators here...hehe.

After church on Sunday, we spent the day hiking at a county park down the road. We were able to see lots of wildlife including 4 Alligators, Turkey Vultures, Banana Spiders, Great Blue Herons and much more. It was a very relaxing fun afternoon. We headed back to camp for dinner, then went out to Crab Dock for a bonfire and star gazing with some other staff members. It was a great night to see the Milky Way:)

I had to work on Monday, but Katelyn came along with my afternoon class on the beach and to the Mud Pit, she was a trooper, covering herself in mud with me and helping me control my class, who was a little out of control. She hung out with the staff on Monday night while I was working. Then flew out at 6:20am on Tuesday morning, wow, was that early.

Overall, we had a great weekned catching up and exploring the beautiful sites in Charleston, it was such a blessing to have someone coming visit me.

island adventure.

On Saturday we left camp for a short kayak ride over to an island near the ocean, about 1-2 miles away. 4 of us left from camp in the afternoon with plenty of time before sundown. The current was much stronger than we had expected, and one staff member was having a hard time paddling, since she didn't have much experience. After about an hour of trying to paddle to the island, we looked to shore and realized we had not really gained any ground. The staff member having the hard time went paddled back to camp while myself and a friend named Chad paddled over to the island.

After about 20 min. of intense paddling, we made it to the island and pulled our kayaks ashore. The island is in the shape of a triangle, so we started hiking around one side and looking for birds. I brought my bird book and we both had binoculars (even though we weren't really that good at bird watching) we did spot a few sweet birds. The 2nd side of the island is on the ocean, so there are Sand Dollars everywhere. We felt like little kids during an Easter egg hunt trying to grab all the Sand Dollars we could carry. As we kept hiking, we realized the sun was setting. It was such a beautiful sunset, I can't even begin to describe it...and pelicans were flying all around us. While the sun was setting on one side, the moon was rising on the other. We eventually made it to the last side of the island...then we realized the place where we were supposed to hike was flooded because of high tide. So we had two choices...to swim or to hike the long way around the other side of the island. We chose to swim...little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.

As we stepped into the water, Chad reminded me to do the "Stingray Shuffle" one minute later a 2-3 foot Stingray came out right in front of Chad. He screamed like a little girl and ran back to shore...we had a good laugh over that one. Chad was wearing Crocs that he put on his hands and used as paddles, I had everything in my backback including all my Sand Dollars and bird book (which is now ruined). So there we were, swimming through the Estuary, praying for the Lord to be with us. It was so funny! I couldn't look at Chad without thinking I was going to drown after laughing so hard. We swam for about 20 mintures before reaching shore. We ran back to our kayaks (which thankfully were still there). By this point, it's dark and the sun has set, but there was a very bright full moon to guide us back. We said a prayer of thanksgiving and had a laugh before we set off for the last leg of our adventure.

We made it back to shore in 15 minutes, where we were greeted by a few worried staff members...we were about 1 hour 15 minutes later than we were supposed to, but we had a great story to tell:) Anyway, it was a great time and I wanted to share the story with all of you, hopefully there will be many more to come.