Week One has come and gone...

Well, a week has gone bye for the Summer Seminar and things have been going alright. At the beginning we started off with a bang with our orientation for the kids. Within orientation some of the counselors came up with a couple of songs to help the kids out remember the rules for the program. Now I was able to record both on video with my digital camera, and fortunately for you I was able to post one of the two songs on Youtube.com. So here is the video.

Within the first week we've already sent a kid home for smoking pot and I've caught a boy with two girls in his room with the door closed (fortunately they weren't doing anything). All of us counselors have been busy with our various jobs and committees that we are a part of. For me, I've been given the job of Camp Store Manager. So basically I'm second in command for the store that Summer Seminar runs. With this I've made up a time sheet for my fellow counselors to sign up for shifts to help run the camp store. Also I've been in and out of the store making sure everything has been running smoothly. Now with the camp store we not only sell candy and little odds and ends; but we also allow the students and counselors check out movies, portable DVD players, video games, and video game systems (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii). For all this checking out of electronic items, we've been using a sweet program call Delicious Library. With this program you could keep up to date with your collection, and also see who has what of your collection if you loan stuff out (which is perfect for us). As for some of the other counselors' jobs, some of them drive the students on field trips, organize the field trips, organize lunches for the students on field trips, TA's for some of the classes, and errand runners to name a few.

Along with performing various jobs for the summer program, we are also chaperones for the various field trips that the students go on. For example this past weekend everyone went to Santa Monica Beach. While there the students could actually go the beach, the pier, or check out the Promanade for stores to shop at. For me, I grabbed some lunch with a few of the counselors and saw a movie. I know that doesn't sound very fun, but I've already been to one of the beaches here in L.A. and I also wanted to try and stay out of the sun which didn't work out very well for me (I still got sunburned from walking around).

Now one of the coolest things I've come across so far here at USC was that this past Saturday before we left for Santa Monica, a golf company Almost Golf was on campus and had set up an urban golf course for people to try out their practice golf balls. The course that they set up was pretty sweet, inventive, and hard as well. Now the course was set up in the quad of USC (basically this is a very large grassy area right close the dorms that we are in), and on the course they incorporated water hazards by using inflatable pools and a couple of fountains that are in the area. With these water hazards, we had to hit the ball out of the water since the balls could float. I was fortunate enough to get a photo of me hitting a ball out of one of the fountains, but at the moment I can't post the picture on this site at the time. This was an intersting experience and wouldn't mind trying to play urban golf again.

I think that's about it for now, I've got some events happening later in the week that I'll fill ya'll in on. Well, until my next post...