Can you feel the love?

Sometimes it can seem as though you work forever and only succeed in treading water, maybe catching onto an item floating past from time to time to add to the items you are already struggling to float with.

Other times life seems like a scene from the Original Mario Brothers, where you jump on floating clouds catching goodies.

Thankfully, these past few days have been the latter.

As the excitement of heading to medical school builds - less than two weeks til Orientation begins!!! I returned from two exciting weeks helping WYA's 3rd Summer Camp for teenagers to the discovery that the work I did with WYA Africa's Decade of Dignity and Development Conference last year had been used as an example of Spirit of the Game on 5Ultimate's blog.

Then, to top everything off I received a phone call from SEVEN Fund, that I had received third place in their essay competition entitled "The Morality of Profit"! What this means is that in the book they will publish next year of the same title, I will be one of the winning essays published! What it also means is that thankfully my years of treading water, reaching out to those treading with me and observations on how we all got there somehow struck a chord and hopefully if we all continue to tread water together will get us a little further if we only keep going.

For this week I'll keep floating on clouds to sustain me when I jump back into the water.

A whirldwind tour of the summer months

Two weeks before I start medical school and I am wrapping up my life in NY. Still need to find an apartment, and will do that on Thursday after I drive home (13 hours!) on Wednesday with my brother, Peter. This summer has been absolutely incredible. 6 weeks in the Arctic followed by a couple weeks in Ontario visiting friends and relaxing at my aunt's cottage - cue waterskiing, bbq and swimming in pristine lake images.

Back to the US of A mid-July to teach Ultimate at a summer camp. Awesome, the camp was 100% devoted to Ultimate and coached by a woman who played on Lady Godiva for 12 years. She impressed me so much with her dedication to Ultimate and the next generation as she organises the camp every year during her vacation and brings in great players to help her teach kids in middle and high school not just the basics but even advanced skills. 

Then on to NY... two weeks in the city divided by attending Wildwood Ultimate Beach tournament before I headed off to yet another summer camp :) Yep, from President of a global organisation to becoming (as one mother of a camper put it, who only saw me driving the van) "oh, are you the camp driver?" yep. 

The World Youth Alliance Summer Camp was our third camp held in Rhode Island overlooking a bay with incredible grounds. It's like spending two weeks in heaven. The cafeteria even has good food with super friendly staff! This year we had kids from Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal, USA, Belgium, Canada and Mexico.

On top of great talks on all sorts of issues related to dignity we played lots of sports, went kayaking, rock climbing, swimming and even had a "fashion show" where the kids came up with genuinely fashion inspired outfits from newspaper, garbage bags and duct tape. By the end of the camp we succeeded in exhausting the kids who went to bed much more willingly, of course at the cost of exhausting ourselves also. Sleeping in this morning was beautiful!

Having a few hours of free time, I renewed my quest for housing in St. John which I'll need to settle by the end of this week and also discovered a great blog. 5Ultimate posted a few months ago about a conference WYA organised last year in which I taught Ultimate to the kids as part of understanding Good Governance through Spirit of the Game. 
http://fiveultimate.com/blog/?p=65

Enjoy!