Cayo Costa Pt. 2, Nature Pt. 3

So the trip was planned. By Alison; we knew very little about the itinerary because Alison loves surprises.
I hate surprises. Seriously hate surprises. I'm one of those ridiculous people that 8/9 times will read the last chapter of a novel when I am only a few chapters in. Or will read the Wikipedia page of a movie I'm watching while I'm watching it. I'm not proud of that, but I just did it this afternoon. Maybe I'll finish Legends of the Fall one day.

Moving on.

I want to begin with out car ride there, because it is important.
We woke up after not sleeping in Haley's living room at 3 in the morning. We piled into our stuffed Toyota Highlander and were on our merry way. I don't know if you have ever seen 6 people and a week's worth of camping supplies fit in a Highlander, but its not pretty. There is a tiny row of back back seats that it about 2 ft. wide and 4 ft long. I'm not making this up.

I say this phrase a lot now, "Don't be a hero. Do what you want." I use it often because it became very real to me that morning. See those tiny seats in the back had a shallow and narrow space to put your legs. That would have worked fine, I mean I can deal with small. But someone decided to put all the tents in that small space, so we had to sit with out feet up.

Haley and I decided to be heros that morning. We had already maturely discussed it, and we were going to be the easy ones on the trip. I was pretty chill, and she was tough.
Neither of us were complainers, that is probably why we liked each other so much.
We were both from big families, which forced us to make the best of a not ideal situations. Not that the other girls weren't, we just had a lot of arrogant pride that we could make the best of it better than anyone else could.

That lasted for about 14 min. I timed it. Then our butts went numb. We spent the next 9 hours playing Cirque de Sole trying to figure out a way to not lose complete circulation. It didn't really work.  And we couldn't take it. At least I couldn't.

I specifically remember stopping at a Crackle Barrel and yelling louder that I intended "I swear I will not get in the back of that car for one more minute because it it singlehandedly making me lose my soul." Like I said, pretty chill.

So anyways, we got to the ferry station. Only a few feathers ruffled. This is a pun because we watched greedy Pelicans for an hour as we waited for the ferry to take us to our deserted Island.
I was pumped, we were all pumped. And hot. And sweaty. And a bit hungry.

When we hopped on the ferry, we got a nice introduction from Captain Bill. I can't remember his name specifically, but it was something very close to Bill.
He was exactly what you would imagine a Florida tourist harbor captain would be like. Probably from Ohio. Came to Florida to retire and got bored so he picked up a side job. He had a dry sense of humor that did not hail from the south; and none of us could figure out if he liked people or not. Or if he even liked driving a ferry.

As we were looking at dolphins and taking pictures with the "Marriage On Board" sing (ooohhhh), Bill off handedly said, "Well girls have fun camping. You know a hurricane is coming right?"

I'm sorry, what?
Yeah a hurricane is supposed to blow right through here in the next few days.
Silence.
You're kidding, right?
Shrug.

I wish I could say that this made me concerned and I fought Bill until he told us the truth. But right then and there I forgot about he ever mentioned it. I would like to think that I read his face and knew he was kidding, but I actually just forgot. I was distracted. By the dolphins. Because I had never seen them before.

Thats a lie I had seen many a dolphin.
I was distracted by my excitement for the adventure, and I didn't care if Bill thought we were a joke.

Inspiration for your Hump Day

So I am student teaching now. I'll write some stories about it later. But right now, my main point is that trying to be a teacher is an adjustment for sure.

- I thought I would be responsible and awesome and grade all of my student's notes so that I can keep them accountable. And I lost a huge stack of them today. The day before the test. Seriously, I have no idea where they went.

- My teacher left the classroom to discipline a student and said, "Ms. Judd, you got them?" And then left. So I slowly walked to the front of the class. "So..what do you want me to talk about?" All of their faces were ridiculous. Slightly surprised, laughing at the kid kicked out of class, and completely unsure if I was about to break out in song and dance. Also they looked at me like I was an alien. They asked me to talk about college. So I started to tell the story about when I accidentally walked into the star of the football team's ring of fire music video shoot. But I didn't get past "One time I was eating dinner." Maybe some day I'll tell them.

- I'm pretty sure I've broken the dress code a few times.

- My best friend right now is a middle aged Geometry teacher and I don't even know her name.

Spoiler alert- I do not know what I am doing. I'm trying. But it takes a lot of time and effort to get there. So I'm at this point where I'm having to constantly remind myself that its worth it.






So here are some inspirational things I have been loving lately:

This book. Read it. 

“Some day I'll probably marry a horny-handed son of a toil, and if I do it'll be the horny hands that will win me. If you want to know, I like 'em with their scars on them. There's something about a man who has fought for it - I don't know what it is - a look in his eye - the feel of his hand. He needn't have been successful - thought he probably would be. I don't know. I'm not very good at this analysis stuff. I know he - well, you haven't a mark on you. Not a mark. You quit being an architect, or whatever it was, because architecture was an uphill disheartening job at the time. I don't say that you should have kept on. For all I know you were a bum architect. But if you had kept on - if you had loved it enough to keep on - fighting, and struggling, and sitcking it out - why, that fight would show in your face to-day - in your eyes and your jaw and your hands and in your way of standing and walking and sitting and talking. Listen. I'm not critcizing you. But you're all smooth. I like 'em bumpy.” 
― Edna Ferber, So Big

My takeaways: Achievement is different for every person. We were created to work hard. So find something you love and be ok with getting scars from it.

This is our inspirational chalk board at my house. We used to have a bible verse, but one day this showed up. I'm not mad.

Nature Pt. 2: Cayo Costa pt. 1

I didn't go camping once in high school. Not a single time.
There are a few factors that attributed to this:
1) My family's outdoorsiness (at this time) stopped after the ant experience.
2) My friends didn't get out much.
3) This is because my friends were mostly under the age of 10.

No I am not creepy, I just babysat all the time.
Usually when I tell people about my high school experience I say that I had one friend and I mostly babysat. And my one friend was a useless weekend time spender because she spent every weekend playing soccer all around the world. But I liked high school, I really did.
Kids have a way of making you feel really smart, because they are dumb and easily impressed. That sounds mean, but seriously they believe everything. Its awesome.

Junior year I made another friend, Alison.
Alison was out of college and it was actually her full time job to be my friend. I didn't let that bother me.
Well, not MY friend specifically. She worked for Young Life, which means her job was to form friendships with high schoolers and show them how great it can be to love Jesus.
This girl was nuts. She looked like sunshine, ran all the time because she liked it, was always smiling, ate weird food like raisins and black bean together because she was poor and desperate to get nutrients. She didn't have her own house or friends her own age (in Aiken at least) . She was the most confident and content person I had ever met.
To Alison, everything was "SO AWESOME", and "SO FUN" and "WOW THATS A DREAM".

I am a skeptical person, and people that are happy all the time usually stress me out. But this girl meant it. As hard as it is for me to be nice to people that seem phony, it is incredibly easy for me to gravitate to people that are genuine.
Alison was real, through and through.
To her, life was an adventure. By worldly standards she did not have much to call her own and her full time job seemed nuts, but she loved it. And I loved her.

I loved that she sat me down and asked me to tell her my story.
I loved that she was jumping for joy the first time she got to meet my family and eat Judd pizza on a Friday night.
I loved that she came to my dance recital and made me feel like the silly prancing I was doing on stage was actually impressive.
I loved that she loved books genuinely and deeply. She wanted to be a writer, and was always asking to hear me talk about my favorite books.
I loved that she talked about Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables like Anne was a real friend, because that is who Anne was to me as well.
Alison was constantly reminding of beauty I was missing every day.

At the end of senior year she announced that she wanted to take a small group of us senior girls on a trip. Heck yeah! As I said, I didn't get out much.

"Its going to be camping."
Ok... not ideal but I can do that. 
"On the beach in Florida.
Alright, I do love the ocean. 
"Its an Island called Cayo Costa and  nobody lives there, you have to take a ferry!"
Hey, I can do a deserted Island! Its like Lord of the Flies...Oh wait maybe that example is...
"We won't shower for a week."
Hold up. 
Seriously?
"Its awesome! Seriously not showering is awesome! Its going to be the best."

It is only because I trusted her that I went on this trip.
Whether she knew it or not, Alison helped me crave adventure. Here was a perfect opportunity being handed to me on a plate.
So I took it.
I still don't really know why

Side note: When I Peaked

So this is my go-to fun fact. (I feel like I'm giving myself away here.)
I was in the 2003 AAU Junior Olympics.

For something really cool and awesome. Like gymnastics. And karate. Both at the same time actually.
Ok not really.

It was for clogging.
For those of you who do not know what that is, it is basically hilly billy tap dancing.
And some people get really into it.
Like 8 yr old me.

So anyways at the Junior Olympics my duet partner and I won a medal for a blue grass rendition of Over the Rainbow. I was Dorothy, and she was the Scarecrow.

And I was cool.
The following month I quit because according to my mom "Clogging was the worst."

But I still thought I was really cool.

The first time I went camping: Nature Pt. 1

I decided to give this blog some focus.

 I love the outdoors a lot; but it was not always that way. Oh no. Old Emmy was one of those middle school divas you want to punch in the face and say BE A REAL PERSON! I was stubborn, afraid of failure, and hated being uncomfortable. Ok most of that is still true now that I think about it.

My appreciation for nature and love for being in it came slowly; a common trend in my ongoing slow crawl to maturity. But it was authentic, real; and a transition that I am thankful for every day.

So I am going to take you through this journey. Once I decided to let God awaken my adventurous spirit, he has taken me on many adventures. Which has be awesome. But this has led me to make many mistakes that put me in hilariously awful situations. Which means that I've learned a lot, so maybe that is the point.

Here, I am going to focus specifically on the "outdoorsy" adventures I have taken. No I have not gone to Nepal and hung out with Sherpas and saved a group of lonely hikers. In fact on the grand scale of adventure difficulty or riveting plot twists my stories are incredibly low. So don't expect a Bear Grylls narrative. Its pretty safe to say that my journey to being outdoorsy started from the bottom, and it has been slow.

I hope you find joy in learning how God used the great outdoors to shape my heart to love Him and love myself.

So I'll start at the beginning.

So the first time I went camping I got pneumonia for the second time. The first time I was 9 months old, so does it even count if I don't remember it? Probably not. 

My second bought came when I was only seven so I don't remember much. But I have a few memories from camping (the source of pneumonia).  I remember being cold, thinking my parents brought too much stuff, and my former babysitter telling a scary story about the Vindow Viper who stalks someone. Turns out he was a Window Wiper with a weird accent.
It was supposed to be funny, but I had nightmares of a vampire calling my house. Guess who made her older sister always answer the phone after that?
 Hehe. Jokes on you Megan.

The second time my family went camping, I was in middle school.
Every few years for Fathers day my mom decides that we are going to be outdoorsy and do fun family bonding activities. So she'll either get my dad a bunch of camping equipment, bikes for the family, or lawn games, etc.

This specific year was camping equipment.
It meant a huge tent, enough to fit all 8 of us, and some low grade cooking stoves.
So off we went! To a state park close by that is. My hometown isn't exactly close to mountains or anything actually cool, so we have to pretend like camping on the lake is worth it.

So we were all excited.
That is a lie. I don't know if anyone was actually excited.
Megan might have been excited. She was the one who liked being outside.
My parents were probably psycho stressed about packing everything and herding the whole fam to the woods.
Side note, my mom had recently had Lilly at the time (or she was pregnant, I can't exactly remember). So camping with two middle school girls, an elementary school aged boy who was easy enough to excite, two toddlers, and a new born.
Awesome.

At this time I decided that I was not ok with camping. See my dad snored, and I could not handle listening snoring or sleeping on the ground. So I was happy to report to my mom that I was not going.

We reached a compromise that I would have my own tent, and I could sleep as far away from the family as I liked. And I would also have an air mattress to sleep on. That worked for me. I mean " I wasn't happy or whatever, but I was going. Your welcome mom. Gosh."

So when night time came my parents set up their palace and filled it with at least two pack and plays. My siblings laid out their sleeping bags (no air mattresses), and I set up my tent.
I blew up my mattress via the car power source and happily went to bed dreaming of being indoors.

The sun woke me up and I smelled my dad making pancakes. I heard some birds chirping, and looked out the window to see the lake looking like glass.
"Its actually kinda nice."
I couldn't even hear my family because I was at least 100 yards away. For some reason the thought of being mauled by a bear and my family not being able to hear me scream never entered in my mind in the process of picking out my solo camping spot.

So in the moment when I first woke up, I was happy. I remember thinking "Maybe I can do this whole nature thing."
Then I felt something on my face.
What. 
I looked down to see a trail of ants coming through the small hole by the zipper. They happily marched in through the tent, onto my air mattress, over my sleeping bag, and over my body, and then exited out of a hole in the back of the tent.
No joke.

I didn't even scream out of fright. I think it was more of an angry "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

And I just knew my mom would make fun of me.
And say "Thats what you get."
Which is exactly what happened.
I don't think she slept at all that night, so she was definitely not in a mood to dish out a seldom given dose of sympathy.

I was upset, that is true. The whole campground had a front row seat to evidence of that.

But I also remember laughing at myself deep down. I knew that being high maintenance was stupid and I didn't want it for myself, but I didn't know how to shake it.
I also thought that outdoor enthusiasts were weird and their clothes were super ugly.

But as I was outside of my tent brushing the ants off of myself and my sleeping bag I decided that I would never go camping again.


Ha. Ha. Ha.


****DISCLAIMER

After speaking with my mom about this post, she politely informed me that the whole family experienced an ant infestation. They were in everyone's business.
I think this speaks to my middle school self centered mentality, because in my member this only happened to me. Sorry fam.