Rainy day fun...

So when it rains on the mainland, people might leave a bit early to get to work. They might wear a raincoat and tote an umbrella around. But life pretty much goes on per usual.
So what happens when it rains, or rather, storms, on an island - specifically Catalina. First off, schools cancel their trips and the poor mid-20's men and woman who work here are left with no hours to work, therefore creating more debt. With no rent to pay, and no food to buy, how, one might ask, do these innocent souls get even poorer?
Well, when it rains, our 2 mile dirt driveway from hell washes out and closes down. Access #1 out of camp - gone. Access #2 - a boat. However, you can only take small boats (like Whalers) to Avalon and when there's a small craft advisory out for 6 days straight, that means no getting out of camp. If you were stuck in a small community without anything to do and it was raining all day nearly every day, you'd stock up on booze, too.
Which brings me to our first drinking night - last Sunday Funday. We drank outside in the rain with classic games like flip-cup and Beirut (or beer pong for those who don't know what real beer pong is). A dance par-tay closes the night.
The week proceeded with numerous drinking events. The Marlin Club (the bar in Avalon) was recreated in Pinetree house here, complete with tacky female/male posters that you stick your head through and magically, you have a beautiful body. The juke box playlist and inspiring signs such as "Shoes required, shirt optional" were also copied. The fooseball table was my hangout spot for the night. My boss and I (who's wife and daughter were trapped in Avalon for the week just so the daughter could go to school) kicked some serious ass in fooseball while only minorly molesting co-workers. A dance par-tay closed the night.
We have a few bad TV watchers here in camp - heading them all is another Kelly. At the top of her list of bad TV - that's right - Jersey Shore. So, true to creative minds everywhere, we had a Jersey Shore party as well. Girls dressed trashy with boobs hanging out everywhere, make-up grossly overdone, and "the bump" hairdo. Nearly every guy came in white tank-tops, bling, and greased hair. To complete the set, we all got Jersey Shore names (http://www.unlikelywords.com/2009/12/08/jersey-shore-nickname-generator/). I was "The Incident", but among favorites were, "DJ Douchebag", "Juice Springstein", and "Tight End". If you're looking for a party theme where people can say ridiculous sentences like, "I'm hooking up with my girl, [insert name here]'s hooking up with his girl and ahh, we're gonna have sex, so, ya know, that's the situation." BTW - "The Situation" was my boss's name.
And of course, after all this drinking, we need some sort of exercise. Many girls participate in awesome DVD work-outs such as Yoga Booty Ballet (YBB as it's known here), So You Think You Can Dance workout, 30 day Shred, and many others. This went on every day in the morning or before dinner.
We also had lots of sober fun. The rock race was a highlight. Everyone paints a rock, hopefully with a brightly-colored cool design. Then we throw the rocks in the ditch that runs through camp and the goal is to have your rock be closest to the beach without actually going in the ocean. After 25 of us threw rocks in, 5 rocks have been seen since. I'm fairly sure my rock, entitled "What now...ya..." (it was suppose to intimidate the other rocks) is 30 feet below by now.
Another highlight - camp-wide capture the flag. Lots of running and guarding and prison. My team had about 5 people in prison within 20 minutes of the game. After about 30 minutes of sitting there without any hopes of a prison break, we went to the nearest house and got out the beer. When it started raining again, it was time to shower off the mud and warm up again.
Good old fashioned board games and movies were a constant throughout the week. My APD Tully ended up kicking some serious Oceanopoly butt, but I think we all could have predicted that one. Whatevs, I came in 2nd place.
Today we finally get kids again. Which is good considering some examples of bank accounts here are the following - $86.61, $43.25, and the winner - $3.17. This doesn't include debt to relatives, significant others, medical bills, student loans, or credit cards.

Yes, we accept tips.

So I got back to camp on Monday. Even though Colorado was starting to warm up, it was glorious to get back to sunny and warm southern California.

It started Monday night with an epic Agave (one of the houses here) dance par-tay. We're all excellent dancers here, especially when we have a few bud-lites in our systems. Great fun, as always.

Then yesterday was staff bonding day. We went on a road that leads to the interior of the island and climbed high on the hills to watch the ocean. It was pristine. Hot sun on our faces, sweating in a t-shirt and shorts - life is good. We hopped in and out of erosion sites, which I'm sure the Catalina Island Conservancy really loved. Then, to make matters worse, we played Camoflauge. Camoflauge is a game we're no longer allowed to play with kids since injuries are a sure bet every time. There is one person who closes their eyes at a fixed point and starts counting backward from 20. Everyone scatters and hides. When the counter gets down to 0, he opens his eyes and tries to find people hiding, calling out whoever he can. Then the counter yells, "Camoflauge," and begins counting down from 18 instead. Here is where the fun begins. You have to re-emerge from your hiding spot, run and hit the counter's hand and find a new spot before he opens his eyes. The end result: chaos. The game continues until there is only one person left and the counter is counting from, oh say, 3. That makes it only slightly harder to find a good hiding spot.

Today I unpacked this morning, then went for a jog after lunch. I ran for about 2 1/2 minutes before a friend told me there was a whale outside our bay. A few girls and I (all of which are not working this shift) got in a boat with our boss and eventually found it. A baby gray whale - 3 spouts then dives for about 8 minutes and resurfaces further south. A perfect heart-shaped blow and beautiful fluke as well.

Got back to camp, went for a short run, got my abalone earrings fixed from our in-camp jewelry guru, got my DAN insurance renewed - you know, I got stuff done. Then I found out I got a package! (Note - I love mail.) Last fall I had an awesome group of kids, including one kid who had Asbergers syndrome. I paid extra attention to him and he got along great with the group. The kid and his dad ended up sending me an awesome "super plush throw" Avalance blanket! They knew I was a loyal Avs fan and thought it would get cold this spring on the island. Ah, the benefits of having awesome kids.

Tomorrow, I'll be working maintenance at a sister camp, Fox. Painting is always fun. It's more than great to be back.

More about camp...

So my name is Kelly. Rather unconvenient since 4 of us at camp are named Kelly. I didn't realize it was such a popular name. In fact, my roommate is named Kelly. We are the Kelly house - house of Sycamore. It's awesome.
I found camp when I was 14. A woman from my mom's work sent her daughter there and recommended it to my mom since I loved marine biology (read: I loved dolphins). The first year I went for the science. The next 3 years I went for the social aspect. Then when I graduated high school I worked at camp during summer every summer until I graduated college. With a degree in biology, I became a year-round instructor at camp and still haven't progressed into the real world.
I'm realize more and more what a great connector camp is. We don't work from American Thanksgiving until after New Years (in fact, I go back there 9 days from now) and people travel all over the country, Canada, and even Puerto Rico to visit each other. I recently had a pseudo boss call me saying she has no where to stay for a night, can she come stay with me. That was the best thing that's happened to me all of break!
Whenever we travel, we have places to stay literally all over the country. Oregon, up and down the California coast, I'm in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, and don't even get me started on how many places in the Northeast. And those connections will last for a long time after we stop working at CIMI.

The seasons at camp are fall, spring, and summer. Summer is a whole new ball game since individual kids come to camp as oppose to school groups. Plus they stay for 3 weeks at a time. It's awesome and I highly recommend to kids everywhere to start saving money and take a trip out there.
Now fall and spring. Fall is 11 weeks long, warm, clear water, but nothing really alive in the water. This is because the major marine habitat in Southern Cali is kelp forests. Kelp is a brown algae that likes to grow in cold water, so come hot summer, it starts to die. This leads to most of the animals either dying or moving to colder, deeper waters. This makes our snorkel with kids uneventful and difficult since it's hard to find cool things like Giant Black Sea Hares.
Spring, on the other hand, is 20 weeks long, cold air, freezing and often murky water, yet full of life. The island gets a bit of rain in spring and that's all it takes for grass and wildflower to spring up everywhere. Not to mention the ocean is full of life again. The kelp engulfs you when you scuba dive and snorkel - it's great! Plus all the invertebrates come back to play.
So that's what I have to look forward to in 9 days. I'll be meeting up with a good friend of mine at the airport (his flight gets in 1/2 hour before mine), we'll take a shuttle to the boat terminal, take the hour long ferry to the island, then it's only a short boat ride or 30 minute car ride back to home sweet home. That should be the next post - after the big reunion party.

Why blog?

I just finished watching Julie & Julia with my family. My sister said the movie really makes you want to cook. When I finished it, it really made me want to write a blog. It took me about ½ a second to realize I have nothing worthy of writing a blog about. My good friend Vince writes a great blog about being a “Triathlete in Vancouver”. My mom wrote a blog a few years ago called, “The Sunday Girl.” It was about how she was seeing this guy who never asked her out on classic date nights, Fridays and Saturdays, but only on Sundays and she was getting quite frustrated with the whole thing (or fling?). Her blog even got a mention in the paper.
So what the hell could I write a blog about? Well, it took me about 2 minutes to realize that I have what is considered by most people I talk to the dream job. I do have one of, if not the, best jobs in the world. It is fun, yet challenging and certainly tests your patience. I work with great people who all love the job as much as I do. It is Never Never Land here on Earth. It is the Real World, but without the TV crew and casting directors. And at least one day a week, it is Paradise. And people I know have been sick of me discussing it for years now, so why not spread the joy to complete strangers!?
I work for Catalina Island Marine Institute (CIMI) at Toyon Bay. Catalina Island is one of eight Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. We are a camp that, in a nutshell, teaches children marine biology. Kids from 4th-12th grade come with their schools out to my camp for 3 or 5 days and we teach them about the ocean, what lives in it, and a bit of conservation. (On a side note, many of us instructors always throw in something about conservation even though the owners of the camp do not really believe in it and refuse to let it be part of the curriculum.) We take them snorkeling and through labs – primarily fish, shark, algae, plankton, invertebrate, and marine mammals. The kids get to touch many of these animals (all but the fish and marine mammals that are alive, actually) and in the process, hopefully learn. Groups that stay for the 5 days get to do other fun activities like hike, kayak, rock climb, and tide pool. At night we take them on a mini hike for astronomy, turn the dining hall into a squid dissection laboratory, night snorkels, or an adventure through the deep sea (all instructors hate this last one for reasons that will be explained in further blogs).
There are 26 instructors that work at Toyon, all between the ages 22 and 31, 12 boys and 14 girls, and all with a large part of themselves never wanting to grow up. We have 2 APDs (Assistant Program Directors) and 1 PD (Program Director) with the same life philosophy, which makes for interesting days off.
This blog will be about my work. The biggest problem I see is that my work is literally my life, but in a good way. My commute to work in the morning is at most a 2 minute walk from my house/apartment type thing – Sycamore. We all live in the camp. No stores. No people (except the customers, of course). No traffic. No sirens. No cell service (which we all got used to scarily fast). We just got wireless internet one year ago (which I admit – I love and I’m addicted). We have three delicious meals made for us every day and despite the love/hate relationship we have with SYSCO foods and eating the same thing every week, we are never hungry. I mean never. It’s all you can eat… every… meal. Thank goodness we lead much more active work lives than being in an office. I for sure would have gained 20 pounds by now.
So basically my life is balancing my work with the people I work and live with. And finding alone time in which to run, read, and do nothing. And time to communicate with the outside world, whose existence is often easily forgettable (sorry family!). Answering machine messages on the landlines in camp often sound like this –

“Hi Travis, it’s your mother. This is the 3rd time we’ve called you. Please give us a call sometime soon!...ok. Call us back. Love you.”
“Hi, this message is for Kelly Montenaro, this is your mother. We haven’t heard from you in a while, give us a call! Love you.”

And of course, the inevitable call from an in-camp member –

“Hey, poop brains! Pick up! Pick up! … The party is on the dive deck! Bring the rum. You smell like feces. Take a shower! But bring the rum first!...uh…ok. See you in about five!”

Our lives are great. And hopefully this blog will let people who choose to read it laugh at us (or if I’m lucky with us). Maybe they will read this and think of how lucky I am to have this job. Or sometimes they might think, “Wow. 54 degree water, 50 degree air temperature, and a night snorkel?!?! F…that…shit.” Rest assured dear readers, I often think the same thing.