Sunday, July 26, 2009, students arrive

I woke up early as was my normal time for Youth Slam. I reported to the dining hall at 6 am like I had the morning before. I knew that this was one of the last meals I would be just marshaling for the mentors and the students would soon be joining us. We met on the quad at around 11 AM to receive our duties for marshaling. I was assigned to helped inside With registeration. The students would come into Annapolis, receive a number and then I would seat them in the classroom area. Some of the students were okay with coming in and seating themselves, others needed help. They all had there luggage which presented a whole other issue of how to get students from the door into the building checked in, sitting down in the classroom and met up with their mentors. Along the way I had help from other mentors who had not gotten there mentoree yet. We had buses of 40 students come in at a time which caused major amounts of chaos. Some of the students who needed more help had never been away from their parents before. In between bus loads of helping students a group of mentors and marshalls would sit down and talk. I got to know more of the mentors at this point, and started to remember names.

One specific male mentor, named Joe and I had a great time talking. Although I learned much about him, the one thing that stood out was that he was married. This was okay with me as I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I also did not put this Joe together with the same male mentor from the day before or with the person who graciously gave me a ziplock baggie. There were at least 5 male mentors all named Joe that I knew of during this week long camp.
The students would get registered, and then there mentor was called down to the Annapolis building to retrieve them. They would all go back to their dorms and unpack and get oriented. At around 5:30 pm, yet again I was pulled to go to the dining hall to marshal. This dinner by far is one I will never forget. At 6 we had a line, and students and mentors started to come in. But our line reached out the door of the hall. It took everyone a long time to get through line about an hour if not longer. It also did not help that there was another group in the dining hall of an additional 300 people. I felt bad but there was absolutely nothing I could do. Knowing that some of the students had never been away from Mom or Dad nor had carried a cafeteria tray and used that tray to get there own food is the main reason why it took so long. We were able after that to get more people in the dining hall to help marshal. After I finished up my marshaling duties I attempted to sit down to eat, but then was called back to Annapolis to help with the last minute students that were arriving. And after all they did not need me right away, so I waited by talking to other mentors who were in the building. The students who just arrived had not had dinner, so meals were brought down. Then we had the added problem of all the luggage to get to the dorms. So a group of us put a batch of luggage on the flat bed cart, and some of us pulled two suitcases behind us. We started off at the boys dorm, and instead of finding the accessible way to the front of the dorm, we had to take the luggage up the stairs. It was the fastest and we still had three other dorms to deliver too. So I sat guarding and protecting the luggage while they delivered them to the dorms. While I was watching the bags, the students and mentors had a meeting in the Quad. Yet other students who had not eaten had meals brought up from the dining hall. After one and half hours of sitting with the luggage I was finally relieved from my duties to get food for dinner. My roommates mentee had arrived, so while I ate they got to know each other. These first few days were very frustrating, not only being lost on campus but being given directions with not much instructions. That night I was finally able to go to bed around midnight after a very exhausting day;But this would also be a trend for the rest of the week. I was already tired and had walked a lot but the amount of walking would only increase in the next couple of days to come. It should also be noted that up until now, I had not eaten a meal while sitting; all of my meals were eating as I walked or on the go.