Really, it's not, at least after you've had frickin' hot sun beating down on you for 3+ hours and are starting to feel delirious. Today I shadowed another CRE* leader, and lucky-me, weed pulling and painting some sort of lacquer over a never-ending-fence is what she had planned today. At first I was really quiet with the group as I was kind of assessing all of their separate teenage-punk-personalities, but like I said, once the sun got *really* going... haha... well, I just got crazy.
Luckily when I get crazy I come down to the level of a 14-15 yr. old (maybe younger? :P). I felt kind of bad because throughout the day I sometimes felt like I was "stealing" the CRE* from the other CRE* leader, unintentionally.. but they would kind of gravitate to me as a group. It was 5 min. before lunch, and I figured that if we worked really fast we could go in 5 min. early (plus we wanted to "work at sonicspeed" to finish painting before the slackers (walking from the ramada/shade area) arrived so we could say, "we're finished and don't need your help anymore.." .. man slackers bug me, and I probably shouldn't have passed that on to the others who were working with me.. but it was kind of 'jokey' anyway). But yeah, we finished, and went in, but they *all* went in and left the other (primary) CRE* leader working out there all alone! Not good.. I made them go back out and find her.
Later we were pulling weeds.. (mentioned above) and I just about thought "I can't take any more of this crap..", but I knew it was a job that the kids had to finish.. and I was definitely delirious/heat-stroke-setting-in.. haha... and one kid was hilarious (we called him "the hulk" because he just loooved pulling weeds at sonicspeed..) ... and so I joined in with "the hulk".. making our ridiculous task into something fun.. "We can't miss a weed! Look.. we have our bag-openers.. our weed-spotters... and the pullers... every weed must die!!" .... haha, it doesn't sound funny, but it was... oh yes.. we were on a mission!! ... at one point it got really funny because I was pointing around like.. "ONWARDS! TO THE WEEDS!" (it was really ridiculous, we couldn't even find weeds most of the time! .. which was the funny part).. "Follow me troops!".. lol.. it was insanity, looking back on it, but they really got into it then. One girl even started yelling.. "WHAT DO WE WANT??" (And I made us all shout out.. "WEEDS!!") .. "WHEN DO WE WANT THEM??" ... Reply: "NOW!!" ... haha. Oh it was great. Then I made us do a huddle, where we all convened with our hands in, and shouted, "Weeds!!" ... haha.....
wow.. craziness. hm.
Anyway. The rest of the day was a lot of fun, despite the blistering/death-heat of the sun. I hope the CRE* I select is half as fun as these group of kids... I'm not known for having the most glorious time with entertaining kids usually, but I think this age group is just perfect... as long as they're not my brother (who happens to be 14), because we tend to fight.. but still get along for the most part. :) Anyway. Yeah. Looking back on it, the day wasn't so bad, despite me thinking it was never going to end and that I might die in the field of weeds.
Lin *
Jason
Sarah
Phil