Summer Math Camp has come and gone. It was a real quick 5 weeks of camp this year, and I'm sad to see it go. It's hard because I know that since there's no more math camp, my days are going to be a lot lonelier. But I did get a whole lot of memories from this year in math camp. Let me give you a quick recap:

1. I spent the first couple of days doing the food sales because all the teacher positions were already filled. I actually didn't mind doing the food sales because it's a pretty relaxing job. All I did was sit around and talk to the workers. But a few days later I went to go walk around the classrooms to get to know the kids, and all of them knew me as the "food guy." I ended up shedding that image throughout the weeks.

2. Like always, there's always a bunch of interesting kids. There are the quiet ones, the ones you really bond with, the ones you want to smack, the ones you just ignore because they show no respect to anybody, and the ones who will eat you up with a spoon because you're a man (thus we get the character: Man-Eater). And you try to do your best and get to know as many as possible so that when the picnic rolls around, maybe 1 of the 20 you bonded with shows up. The sad part is that you may never see the other 19 ever again, even though you guys promise each other you'll be back next summer when we all know guessing our plans for next summer is near impossible.

I was talking to Kenny yesterday and I think we both felt a little disappointed in ourselves. Math Camp always ends off with a sense of...worthlessness because we invest so much time into these kids, and most end up not showing up. It's almost like we had no impact on them in these 5 weeks because our ultimate goal of having them come out to church didn't happen. And I do wonder if I even had any kind of influence on these kids.

3. A lot of these kids will spend time trying to read you like we're at a poker table. For instance, the kids were right when they told me I was a loner, because that's a proven fact. Some told me that I'm not serious enough and that I joke around too much, but I think that's totally false. I actually think I'm pretty serious and just use humor as a way to cover up things.

Just like I had Canada Withdrawal, I'm going to have Math Camp Withdrawal. And it's not so much the places I'm going to miss, but its really just the people.

Joe Ho (you can read his blog on my link section) has a really good post up right now that I thought was a great read. It discusses about how you can't force love; sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not. I guess that's hard for me to accept but it's nice to see him discuss something like that. But it is hard to deal with the fact that someone will never see you the way you see them. To me, it just feels like wasted love, because that love will never reach its potential. I don't know if it's possible to love someone with all your heart when you know the other person doesn't love you with a tenth of their heart.