Lizzie Cooper – Day 3

Let me start off by saying that if you take a group of teenagers to stay a few nights together in a hotel, even if they are awesome kids and don’t really do anything “bad”, it is never a good idea to have your guys share connecting rooms above the front desk and hotel offices! There has not been a night that the hotel hasn’t sent someone to tell us to quieten down. But I don’t think we’ve been that loud even.

Last night a lady came up and asked us, pretty pointedly to quieten down. We complied and thought we had the situation calmed down. Then about 10 minuted later the security guard comes back up there saying he’s not getting to daydream on his golf cart out in the parking lot because of us. I asked him had we not gotten quiter since the lady had spoken with us. I don’t think he knew either way, but he said that next time he had to come up there he was going to have to wake up whoever was in charge of all of us to get us quite. All of the guys were about to explode with snickers….I think I did quite well holding them in myself. So he repeats himself a few times and the snickers start sneaking out. One guy is actually laughing in his face. The reason for the laughs? The person in charge of them all is me! I kept wondering if I should told him or not. But I didn’t. It was funny though. But I didn’t think we’d been loud and I didn’t want to push the issue at that time.

But…early in the day we had a full day. We got an early jump on the day and pulled out the colored paint. We sketched out a rough draft of what we wanted the mural to look like, then went to work. To be honest, it turned out much better than I expected it too. Everyone agreed. But it had a huge “PRAISE THE LORD” over on the left side, then some little brown kids with cornrows in their hair in bright clothing, big fat flowers, and a huge yellow cross with a blue heart in the middle of it. Again, pictures were taken. We put some random stuff on the back wall as well.

We were all proud. We even had people honk and shout “Looks good!” as they’d zoom down the road. Once while we were painting we heard a hugh skreech of tires and then a big splash. We all looked up in time to see an old Lincoln come sliding sideways into the parking lot, a dozen yard from where we were. There was almost a car accident and a car swerved into the front lot to avoid a crash. But one of our guys thought it was a driveby and the driver was about to pull out a weapon or something. His legs were shaking for over 10 minutes because of that.

The kids started coming in while we were finishing up painting. We left for a quick lunch before returning, all in our swimsuits. After a loooooooooong ordeal trying to get 30 of their kids paired up with the 15 of us, we all loaded up and went to Rapids on the Reservoir, a waterpark just outside of Jackson. These young innercity kids hardly ever get to experience anything like this, so we provided a way for them to have the opportunity. It was a circus! Some of the kids were fine. Some liked to fake drowning. My two kids I had were opposites. One didn’t want to get in water over his ankles, the other wanted to do the big slides. But James lossened up and enjoyed the Lazy River and the Wave Pool and D found a tube to float in the Wave Pool as well. It wasn’t that bad for most of us, but some had some really tough kids to keep up with. It was a draining experience, but we all had fun.

Right now it’s Thursday morning and everyone is sleeping in. We’ll get home a litle earlier than we’d expected, but that’s all good. It’s been a good week. Really has. I’ve been impressed with the work effort of our students. No one really slacked at all. Even the cheerleaders were amongst the hardest workers!