TGIF?

So ordinarily Friday means the last day of work and the first day of glorious weekend freedom, but for us RAs here at CTY it pretty much means the exact opposite. Weekends mean no classes, which means we have the kids ALL DAY. From 7:30 am to 11:00 pm. Lucky for me my scheduled presence doesn't start until 8:15 tomorrow, so I get to sleep in all the way to 7:45, woo! It also means that instead of the regular weekday one hour activities, which can be pretty mellow, we have three and a half hour mega activities. The first big activity of this session is the Game Show Marathon tomorrow afternoon, which I'm helping to plan. I think we have everything taken care of, but I'm still really nervous that everything will go horribly wrong at the last second...

Besides possible impending game show catastrophe, Friday also means RA Group Away Day. Instead of regular weekday activities in the afternoon all the RAs do something special with their halls, which often involves leaving the JHU campus. My group and I went to the grocery store (their idea, not mine) and then to ice cream. The latter was especially fun, since the owner gives free ice cream to RAs who bring their halls to her shop! We went to both places with our "brother hall" (the boys' hall for the same classes my girls are in), which might not have been the best idea because those boys were hyper and now all the kids from both halls are convinced that the boys' RA and I are engaged (not true!).

The last thing Friday means is FRIDAY NIGHT DANCE!! This is another activity I helped plan, but since it just involved putting up some balloons and making a playlist it was a lot less stressful. My girls got all dressed up to go, and though they were sort of shy about dancing when they first got there, by the end of the night a fair number of them were holding boys at arms' length and awkwardly swaying to slow songs. The best part of the dance was when they played American Pie at the end, which is a CTY tradition that has been around as long as anyone can remember. There are lots of special dances and yells that go with it, and it was so exciting doing it again after seven years!

After the dance the girls had a "party" in one of their rooms, which basically meant they gorged themselves on all the chips and cookies they bought at the grocery store today (which in turn meant I had to take two of them to the health office for stomach aches later). I was in here catching up on CIMRs because I figured they'd want some alone time to talk about the dance, but after about five minutes one of them came to my room and demanded to know why I wasn't in there with them. Did I mention I have the best girls ever?

The best part of the day, and perhaps of my whole CTY experience so far, was when in the middle of the hall party one of the girls yelled out "Today was the most fun day of my entire life!" Maybe it's the sleep deprivation, but I almost started to cry because that made me so happy.

Now the girls are all asleep in a heap in one of their rooms (they're allowed to have sleepovers on weekends), they look sort of like a litter of puppies. Today was exhausting and tomorrow will be even more so, but there's absolutely nothing else I'd rather be doing!

CIMRs today: 3 (two on the same kid!)
Thought of the Day: Nerd dancing is awesome.