Youth Camp

This past weekend I worked at a youth camp for the Indian Tribe that I work for.  The camp is funded by the BLM and Park Service to bring the kids (ages 10-12) to their ancestral lands to learn about their Southern Paiute culture.  We held the first camp in 2008.  We had another scheduled for September 2009, but a bunch of our kids came down with H1N1 flu the week of the camp so we postponed it until this weekend.  We will hold the official 2010 camp this coming September.

When it was going to be last September I wasn't expected to go because I was still breast feeding, but since I no longer have that attachment, my supervisor required me to help chaperon the camp.  It's the first time I have been away from Austin over night, and it was both Friday and Saturday night, but I actually handled it really well.  And of course the boys did fine at home.  Austin was super cute and gave me a bunch of hugs and kisses when I got home on Sunday afternoon.

I taught a water quality lesson at the reservation before we left for the camp which was held at Mt. Trumbull.  The lesson went really well and the kids did great with the titration tests.  The rest of the camp was all cultural and the kids learned Paiute games, words, songs and learned about making things their ancestors did like yucca soap and rope, arrowheads and spears.    I even learned to count to five in Paiute and learned the names for mule deer, jack rabbit, cottontail, and squirrel.