My last week of teaching at the Youth Science Institute is over for the summer. Next week I'm back at my other job, although in a slightly different, less educational summer camp role since it's more of a "social" and less of a "science" camp. That means more swimming, archery, rope climbing, and the like, and fewer science lessons. Sounds relaxing. The camp days are twice as long as the ones I have been doing though.

We ended on a good note this week though. During our snack time at Ghost Rock (aka Jabba Rock), a curious deer wandered up and circled the group several times, coming within ten feet of us. The kids were thrilled, and actually managed to keep relatively quiet while this was happening (very hard to do if you're 3 or 4). After awhile, the deer satisfied its curiousity and wandered off. We moved on as well, and found a large, hairy pile of scat with some vertebrae and a claw in it. I couldn't identify what kind of animal the bones came from, but the claw looked large enough to come from a Raccoon. Most of the kids were fascinated, but a couple were grossed out. Towards the end of camp, we all ate cupcakes because one of the girls turned 5 today. I even got a cool, hand-painted card with feathers (a raven's and another one possibly once belonging to a turkey) attached to it from the little 3 year old, and another card with 20 dollars stuffed inside it from one of the older girls (and her parents, of course). It's nice to get tipped, since working for non-profit organizations is definitely not a get rich quick scheme.