* tiny but powerful *

So I'm actually not tutoring tonight. EPGY called to cancel at the last minute. I was pretty annoyed about that, since I'd gone out of my way to make it work as a favor for them, but now at least I have the night free to do my own things. I actually wasn't that annoyed at Rick, but more at Katia (the head counselor) because she didn't seem very appreciative about my help and she totally could have called me earlier to let me know that they didn't need me. It turns out that the guy I was supposed to fill in for missed his flight this morning and won't be going wherever he was supposed to go. Yet she waited until 6:10 to call me. Meh. Oh well, whatever. Yay for free time. :)

How do I get myself into these things? Sigh... It's really hard to say no when someone asks a personal favor. :-P Tonight and tomorrow night (and maybe Friday night), I'll be helping out as a Music Theory tutor for EPGY Summer Institutes. Rick Sommer asked me last week if I could be a regular afternoon tutor, and of course I had to tell him no since I'd already agreed to start a week early as a Team Leader at Camp Galileo. But he wrote back again yesterday, saying that they're really in a bind for music theory tutors, and could I please spare a few hours to work for them in the evenings? Aiya...so I couldn't bring myself to say no, because I know Rick personally (from SUMaC five years ago) -- even though I know I've been exhausted in the evenings after work. Thankfully, Chi-En is willing to cook tonight, so I'm going to power-nap while she prepares dinner. Wish me luck making it to the weekend...

Day 2 was better than Day 1. That's about all I have the energy to say right now.

Oh my goodness. I can't believe camp starts tomorrow. Today's setup day was really long, but we got everything done by 5:00, amazingly. Lots of brainstorming and procedure-reviewing and then unloading a U-Haul full of curriculum supplies for the next 5 weeks. Then we had to unpack it all and set up the classrooms (one Art and one Science for each of the 2 age groups). I also got my roster for tomorrow. I have twelve 3rd-5th graders this week: 8 boys and 4 girls. I'm a wee bit nervous about the gender imbalance...I've never been in charge of more boys than girls. I've also never worked with this age group, so I'm pretty nervous in general. Am I really ready for this??

Chi-En and I figured out a way to commute together in the mornings, so I hope our system works out. We have to leave by 7:15am, though, so it's time for bed. There's a whole lot on my mind, but it'll have to wait. Here we go...

A few quick things:
1) The phone line is finally working, which means my internet is working!
2) I hope I never have to live in San Francisco or any other big city. It would give me a nervous breakdown within a year.
3) Relatedly, sometimes it is really annoying to be a girl.
4) Chi-En is back (YAY) but she's already sleeping (aww) so I haven't gotten to talk to her (*sad*) and I'm going to stop typing now so I won't wake her up (shhh).

I'm up early because I took Kari and Jeremy to the airport this morning (bright and early at 7:45am). So there won't be any sleeping in for Tina in the near future -- tomorrow is camp setup day (where we go to the school site and prepare the classrooms/materials/etc. and practice running through procedures; scheduled all day for 9:00-5:00), and then work starts on Monday -- but that's alright. I'm sure I'll be taking a nap later today. :-P

Waltz Week ended quite well. I enjoyed last night's closing Waltz Ball, and for some reason I was more dancy than at any of the previous evening events. Many thanks to Eric, Brian, and Mike for a lot of fun dances! But I think the cumulative exhaustion made me sound pretty delirious while the Team was cleaning up and putting things away. Speaking of the Team, our surprise popsicles at the end of Friday's closing session seemed to go over really well -- yay! Ooh, and I really liked my dress last night. I don't normally make a big deal about dresses, but this one was really fun to dance in -- fitted on top, flowy on the bottom, and made of a heavy-ish, stretchy, swishy material. Much fun for spins. :)

(By the way: no, I still don't have a phone line at my apartment. The phone company is dumb. Still waiting for them to get the wiring right.)

For the record, Brian is still the salsa cookie. He's also the Tomato. "El no puede cantar..."

I am *so* glad we had the night off for Waltz Week tonight. It's the only night there isn't an evening event, and I think I speak for the entire team when I say that it's nice not to have to set up or clean up anything tonight. Waltz Week has been going well - it's just been a very long week. I've been having fun, but I think I'll also be glad when it's over.

I've been partnering Joan's morning class on Mastering Waltzing, as well as her half of the afternoon Role-Reversal class. It reminds me a lot of the reasons why I like teaching - it's fun to help people with their difficulties and see them improve. I've also really enjoyed working with this year's Waltz Week Team, because I think we've been doing a good job of running things smoothly. However, I am definitely glad that tomorrow is the last time I have to upkeep a food table.

In other news, it turns out that Camp Galileo actually wants me to start working a week earlier than they originally offered me! Remember how I was just going to volunteer and help out during the first week because there weren't enough kids signed up? Well, Gillian (my camp director) wants to shift things around so I can start as a Team Leader right at the beginning. On the one hand, I had thought that it'd be good to ease into things during that first week (sort of like extra training), but on the other hand, I'm excited to start work right away! Wow...it'll be interesting to shift gears so quickly from Waltz Week to elementary school kids.

I'm also excited to get Chi-En back this Saturday! YAY!! Unfortunately, I won't be able to pick her up from the airport as originally planned, because Gillian is hosting a Hillsborough-staff dinner up in San Francisco, and Chi-En's flight lands in San Jose. But it will be so good to see her and catch up about everything! Hopefully I also won't get creeped out in our apartment at night anymore...

I'm on Brian's computer right now, so I should probably go. Actually, before I do, I will leave you with this brilliant quote from Brian: "You're not online. How am I going to talk to you?" (Yes, folks, we are in the same room.)

Brian is a salsa cookie!

Hi, everyone. I still don't have internet access at my apartment, but here are a few brief updates:

- I am now living in Atherton with Chi-En. Well, except not really with Chi-En at the moment, because she's away on the Catalina retreat with IV. So things have been pretty quiet so far (no shrieking alto laughter yet...). I'm looking forward to having her back next weekend.

- I've finally been able to slow down and get settled the past couple days. Last week was crazy, what with finishing finals, packing, moving out, moving in, attending all-camp training, and attending commencement and departmental graduation ceremonies. Congratulations to the Stanford Class of 2004! (I have more to share about graduation later. Don't worry, it was actually really good for me. I expected it to be hard, but it actually helped make things easier.)

- I had lunch with *Jason Sierra* today! Wow, it truly had been too long...it was great to catch up with him. (Jason was a Testimony bass in 2001-2002.) He's finally back on campus, and will be returning to Stanford in the fall (as a junior)! I'll let all of you catch up with him on your own...

- Waltz Weekend begins tonight, and runs through Sunday afternoon. Then Waltz Week begins Sunday night, and runs through next Friday night. I'm on the Waltz Week/Weekend Team again (for the third year in a row!), so it'll be another busy but fun week. The rest of the Team = Kari (my co-captain), Jeremy, Eric, Brian Lee, Becky, and Dave Kale. Yay!

Okay, that's it for now. Call me to say hi!

Also: Happy Birthday, Theo!
(I know he won't be reading this, though, because he's already gone on missions for the summer. Praying for you, Theo!)

Happy (belated) Birthday to Kari!!!
(Brain fart on my part due to intermittent internet access. Sorry about that!)

It was very, very hard to say goodbye to Erin on Saturday night. After we prayed together, I shed only a few tears on the way out the door, but many more came out during my drive back to the apartment. We have seen each other through so much growth, and we have so many memories. I am going to miss her so, so much.

Erin should be in Chicago by now. The hardest thing is that I do not know when I will see her next. ICTC will keep her very busy, and her mom and brother live in Arizona so there is no guarantee about when she will return to the Bay Area. But I am so excited about what God has planned for her in the next two years! It is going to be *amazing.*

I love you and I wish you the best, Erin dearest. God bless you very much.

(Kari quoted this song in her journal last week, and it has definitely been on my mind in recent months. I'm sure it will seem poignantly true each time I have to say goodbye to a dear friend.)

Here is where the road divides
Here is where we realize
The sculpting of the Father's great design.
Through time you've been a friend to me,
But time is now the enemy -
I wish we didn't have to say goodbye.
But I know
The road He chose for me
Is not the road He chose for you,
So as we chase the dreams we're after

Pray for me,
And I'll pray for you;
Pray that we will keep the common ground.
Won't you pray for me?
And I'll pray for you.
And one day love will bring us back around
Again.

I no longer have consistent email access. We'll see what I can do about getting a phone line in the apartment so maybe I can set up my modem, but for now, call my cell phone if you need to reach me about anything important. Take care, everyone.

Every single quarter since the beginning of sophomore year has left me feeling like a failure. God's always been faithful to bring me through it, but it's really wearing on me. A lot. The scar gets deeper every time.

It's June of 2004. How did I end up here?

Happy Birthday, Graham!

Hm. I now have a summer job. Interesting...

I'd more or less given up on working this summer, since the several camp-counseling/tutoring/teaching positions I'd applied to weren't panning out. I've been intentionally very picky about what to apply to, because I have a pretty clear vision of what this summer should be about for me. I want to be deliberate about making it a time of rest, to recover from the crazy pace of Stanford life (I think I'm still mildly burned out, even after taking a quarter off last Spring). I want to experience what God can do in my life when I'm not perpetually tired -- or even better, when I may even be perpetually rested (*gasp*). I want to decompress, to have fun, to take things slow, and to let God restore me. I'm super excited about living with Chi-En, because I think it fits in perfectly with my hopes for the summer. I also want to have time to spend at home, to hang out with my mom and brother and help clean/pack the house for moving. It will be important for me to spend time in both places (home and Stanford), because of the preparations and personal decisions I'll be making for the coming year.

All that said, I also really wanted to work somewhere that would give me more experience working with kids and hopefully help me decide whether I want to go into teaching after college... but only if it really fit the other things that I want out of this summer. So I basically only applied to three places. Two of them had been sort of keeping me hanging. It's understandable for one of them (EPGY Summer Institutes, run by Rick Sommer who was/is in charge of SUMaC, a Stanford math camp I attended in 1999) because they need to fill their residential staff before adding Drop-In Tutoring staff. Since Rick knows me, he was trying really hard to convince me to join their residential staff, and I have to admit that it was tempting because I could have staffed a Music Theory class for the first 3 weeks, and then a Geometry class for the next 3 weeks. But it really wouldn't have been conducive to the kind of summer I'm looking for, so I told him just to keep me in mind if he ended up needing Drop-In Tutors.

The other place is a program called Camp Galileo. This program is unusual because there aren't that many day-camps around anymore -- most places do residential programs. It also stood out to me because its curriculum combines science, art, and outdoor education. They run at seven different locations around the South Bay, but because I'm on the Waltz Week Team again this year, I was only eligible for about half of them. Unfortunately, since I applied so late in the process (they began accepting applications in February, and I didn't even hear about them until late April), a lot of their spaces were already filled and there were other people ahead of me in priority. Last week they called to tell me that out of their applicant pool for all seven locations, I was one of two people that they really wanted to hire but hadn't found a spot for, because more people than they expected were accepting the offers from earlier rounds. They seemed to go out of their way to tell me (very excitedly) that they really wanted me to work with them (which was nice), but the bottom line was they couldn't offer me anything just yet. So after not hearing from them for almost two weeks, I pretty much considered it a lost cause. I was okay with that, though -- I wasn't scrambling to apply for other things, because I decided that I'd rather not work this summer than get stuck doing something I didn't want to be doing or end up getting stressed out.

But interestingly, God made things work out. I got a call at 9:00 this morning from the main office, saying that they were able to shift things around to make an opening at the Hillsborough location. It's a little farther than I would prefer, but the commute should still be under half an hour. Also, they don't have enough campers registered to hire me for the first week (June 28), but they can offer me a position for the 4 weeks of July. I'll have to juggle things a bit in order to make the training days (like June 19, right in the middle of Waltz Weekend), but it looks like I should be able to take the job.

So I guess I'm going to be a Team Leader (in charge of 16 kids) for Camp Galileo at Hillborough, during the month of July. :) God knows what He's doing with me, as always.

I studied the right stuff (and in the right way--which was sooo key) for my final this morning!!! :-D

Wow...it is so rare for me not to feel bulldozed by an exam.

Thanks so much for your quizzing help last night, Eric!

I'm so glad Chi-En is living in Kimball this quarter. It has been so good for me -- not just because it's fun, but because she clearly has a role in the growth that God is working on in me.

I am really looking forward to this summer. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLUNG!
Yay for 1983! (I know I say that every year...)

(Also, I didn't get around to posting this until after all the craziness this morning/afternoon, but I was the first person to wish him Happy Birthday (correctly) over IM! Yay!)