ZOMG flash flood!

It begins:  Our program coordinator had just left for the week and our director was out on a firewood run. A new school group had arrived that day and we were scheduled to go on a night hike in like, 45 minutes.  At this point we were discussing how lame it was going to be to hike in the rain.

Please note the weird turquoise clouds and the sheet of rain speeding this way. 

Bah! Stay in your cabins kids! This is 30 minutes later after we had progressed through dime sized hail and pounding rain and gone from 'whoa this is some cool storm' to 'should we maybe be concerned about the kids?' to 'OMG TURN OFF THE ELECTRICITY ALL THE BUILDINGS ARE FLOODING!'

This river used to be our firepit and the path between the dining hall and the gathering area

Here is the rushing river pouring right through the lapidary merging with the rushing river coming down from the boys cabins, and Daniel running around herding children. 

Clean-Up!  This is one hour in, while we are still feeling accomplished and stoked on floods and flood cleanup.  by 10 o'clock when we were still shoveling trenches by the light of our headlamps, we were maybe not as cheery...

*all pictures are courtesy of Ali and not me. I wasn't ready with my camera.

Starting to train up to take over the birdies when Meaghan leaves!  This is Mariah, the crazy old owl.  She has just spit amoxicillin in a pink rain all over my face.   Meaghan tried to feed her her antibiotic with a syringe, she's getting smarter and now won't fight the syringe but instead holds it in her beak for a few seconds before shaking her head like a dog and spraying it everywhere.

A cougar print! bwaaaaaaaaa!  not really. it's a dog print from one of the teachers who brought his 'service' dog onto the monument (so forbidden) during the last school group. 

Day of the bus driver practical exam.  We thought it would be so funny to take the bus through a drive-through espresso stand, and it was.  We definitely did NOT clip the edge of the counter on our way out right after Daniel told the Dutch Bros girls that we were on  our way to take our drivers tests....

Here we are at the Big Timbers in Fossil celebrating the end of lifeguarding training and the bus driver test tomorrow (aaaa!)  This is Mitch, a Fossil cowboy who really, really really wanted to play beer pong with us.  Someday Mitch, someday.

Also this picture is terrible but I felt there had to be some documentation of the attempt at the saltine challenge.  A failed attempt, obviously.

At the Madras DMV for busdriver testing.  Thank goodness the DMV people speak my language. 

These are our lifeguarding 'sausages' ready to be put on the bus for the hour long drive to the pool in Madras. It's dark because we got on the bus at 6:30 am every morning.  It was also dark when we returned, at seven o'clock every night. worst week eveeeeeerrrr.  Our second day of lifeguarding/bus driver training required that we, among other things, pretend to be active drowning victims who try to drown our rescuers while attempting to hold our head above water.  So basically what happened was I tried to tackle and drown my coworkers, boss, and boss's boss, right before they tried to tackle and drown me.

When I came back from my Portland delicious restaurant orgy, I was faced with my most terrifying week of the season during which I had to learn to drive a bus AND learn to be a lifeguard.  Gah!  this picture is intended to express my dominant emotions upon facing the school bus on the first day of driving.  Why do they make them so large???