I write from the seating area for a little burger joint in O’Hare’s international terminal. I arrived back in Chicago from California about an hour ago and am now sipping terrible coffee and waiting to be picked up in a bit by one of my brothers.

This summer has certainly been an adventure. I am returning back to the Midwest after spending an unexpected additional five weeks working at the summer camp in the San Bernardino mountains (two hours from LA) where I worked for two weeks in June. A job I had hoped would come through in July didn’t and I was left with more unplanned time, so I returned to continue helping out.

It was a good experience – beautiful surroundings, quality people, and an engaging project. I’m glad for the opportunity to have been involved. They have one more week of their camp season to complete, and then that crew will begin to disperse for the year. I wasn’t able to stay for that though – I was dropped at an airport late last night en route to Greenville, Illinois.

On Wednesday morning at about 4:30am I’ll depart with a group of 60-ish Greenville University staff and students headed for the Smokey Mountains. I’ll be helping lead Walkabout, a backpacking trip for all student leadership for the coming school year at GU. I don’t really know what will be expected or asked of me (except that I’ll be given a small group of college students and charged with keeping them alive and well during a week of gallavanting through the mountains). We’ll see what kind of adventure that holds.

Still don’t know what fall looks like for me. Returning to the UK is a possibility. I’m waiting to hear from a final job opportunity here in the States that was raised amongst a spread of others several weeks ago – like the others, it seems likely that this one won’t materialize. We’ll see what happens.

Until next,

-LS