Yesterday night I went to sleep with a calm and positive attitude. I mean, animals could not get in from the door and if something really terrible would have happened, I would have not stood a chance anyway. Nevertheless, it was one of my worst nights since I have been here. I was lying down on my bed when after about thirty minutes I felt this erratic and fast little movements below my head through the pillow. I was not sure what to think about it, because I was usually bothered just by the mosquito. So when it stopped, I turned my head to the side of the pillow and saw this quick and fast white thing jumping down from my bed and going into a hole. It was a freaking mouse, so I started to panic. Like what the… it meant that mice could get into my trailer!
I was so worried about it because not long ago I was reading a survival manga. I learned that mice are one of the worst animals you can face because they are fearless, they live in big groups and they will always find a way in. Always.
I turned on both flashlights to make sure there was no mice around anymore. Then I scanned all the cabin to find any possible hole they could have gotten in the trailer. I found some below the shelf, so I stacked a lot of wood and stuck it all in. I even turned on one flashlight and kept it pointed at the hole so that the mice would think that I was looking at them. I do not know, but the idea really worked out since I could only hear them scratching against the wood, but apparently no one got in.
Me and Jim painted a little bit before breakfast as we usually are the first ones to wake up. During breakfast I told my night time scare to the others. To be honest, at first I wanted to ask Jim to change my “housing”. But then I thought that I was in no position to make requests. I do not know why, but I always feel bad when I want to ask something for solely for my advantage. Moreover, facing one’s fears and learning to control our reaction in front of scary situations could be a nice way to grow as person.
When I finally caught up, I thought I wanted to change my style of writing and keep only the important things. But I read my blog and found out that I really enjoy reading every little detail that happened. I mean, I am not a famous person so I should really keep it the closest to my own enjoyment that I can. I am the first one who will read it and keep reading it, so it makes no sense to just cut things out to make it look cooler. Cooler for who? Though I still need to work on it because finding the first posts takes too long.
Whatever, after breakfast I went on with the painting instead of going to the rapids. Verena and Annika stayed at the camp as well, so I left the painting to them because there was a harder job to do. In fact, me and Bill (Alyssa’s dad) had to dig a trench 18 inches deep, which is like half a meter. We were lucky because if we were digging on a main street where cars would pass, we would have had to dig three entire feet down. So much.
Well, it took us two and a half hour plus some showers from the sky from time to time, but we dug that trench. It was only two meters from the cabin to the electric post, but it was so hard. No need to go to the gym when you can work out for free like that. It was the hardest thing that I did at the camp, but physically and mentally. I can not believe that Bill had that much energy to keep up and do even more than me since he is over sixty (I guess…). It was funny talking to him because we happened to share lots of work together, especially by doing the dishes. We were always teaming up for the incredible amount of dishes to wash after forty-five people finish to eat. He was super nice and calm which are traits that I really admire.
The job was done, but I had mud all over my body, from the head to my toes. My Timberland were really dirty and had at least four centimeters of gray mud stuck below them. I had to take a shower so I went into the lake with Bill and cleaned my shoes and myself. Lake bathing is the best. You do not waste water and if you use natural products you do not even pollute the lake. Moreover, I never felt my hair this healthy. It must be the conditioner they have combined with the quality of the life here, the temperature of the water in the lake and the stress that is not bothering me even a bit since I came here.
Spent the last five minute of the morning jamming with the kids in the activity building. I was on the guitar, Asher was on the drums (and he is pretty good at it) and Reina was on the harmonica. We had fun singing Simple Plan songs that everyone enjoyed. You know, Simple Plan are from Canada. While we were jamming, Tofu Goddess (a new youtuber who just came in the last night) and her boyfriend helped peeling the incredible amount of corn that Fran bought for supper’s pot lock. Their names were Leanna and Jeremy. He knew lots of lyrics and recommended me to listen to Jon Denver’s songs and learn Mr. Brightside. She was really pretty and had a smooth skin, plus she told me that her mother had Italian parents that she kept calling Nonna and Nonno her whole life instead of granddad and grandma.
At lunch someone must have told my secret desires to the wind because Ben prepared some extra vegan burgers and sausages. I jumped on them and prepared a bun with the burger, the salad, some tomato, mayonnaise and ketchup. Oh my, I was almost in heaven. I missed this kind of food so much. I did not like the sausage that much, but it was good to have something familiar again. I mean, I see myself go without much meat or no meat at all if I would live by myself and would not have to worry about time and money. I know that lots of vegan would argue about that. But when I saw the vegan burger I just realized how strong some kind of food images are in my mind and my stomach. I had never thought about meat or burgers and stuff like that while staying at the camp. Never. But just the sight of a burger made me want to have burgers again. I guess that is one of the reasons why music now counts so much on music videos to do well.
After lunch we had lots of free time. Jim took Mike and his youtuber friends to a location where you could jump from a height of thirty feet, which should be something around ten meters. So I had a lot of free time. Me and the other workawayers tried to hide from Fran to finally get a day off, but we did not have to do that since she went for a nap in the afternoon. So we had no tasks for the day. I mean, no tasks to rush. Laila and Annika fell asleep in Laila’s trailer, Verena drank some beer by the beach and I finally had some time to read a little bit in my trailer before falling asleep for a nap.
I stayed in my trailer until 5.30pm because I felt a little bit lazy to just help out. I thought that I just would have helped with the cleaning. So when I got out from the trailer I just ate the “Italian” food, which I put in between quotes because there was no real Italian food except for a little bit of “sugo ai piselli” that everyone ate as a soup. I had a laughing contest with Jack’s’ mom and it lasted twenty minutes. I was so focused that nothing would have made me laugh, but I played entirely on defense so I eventually lost.
After dinner I actually convinced many people to join me and Jack for a basketball game. I felt so good playing because I carved for sports for so much since I left home. We actually lost both games because Jim and Ben together were too good to be stopped. I had few good moments and Jack had a really good performance, but it was not enough. However, our girl teammates scored lots of points, while on the other side Laila was the top scorer for the girls… with one point.
As we went back, everyone had a swim in the lake but I met Fran and felt bad for leaving her alone to lift heavy stuff to pack in the car for the following day. So I stayed and helped her out, with all of the living mosquito making supper out of me. Fran tried to let me go with the other, but I knew the right thing to do was to help her.
When we finished I finally had my night swim in the lake and bathe to wash away all the sweat from the basketball game. Night swimming is so cool when it is not too cold.
After that, we picked the ukuleles, the cajon and the guitar to go to Mike’s cabin and jam. We had fun and many people were there, but Alyssa came at one point and told us to keep it quieter because there were other people. I was amazed by the nice and gentle attitude she had while asking us to stop. I think it tells a lot about her attitude and the way she treats others. So we had one really long last song (which was more a mashup of different songs to keep it going) and ended up with Airplanes by B.o.B.
I went back to my trailer ready to fight with the mice and thought of some ways to keep them out. Hopefully I will be able to sleep.
Godyl Go! 