meditations on the sunshine state

I'm not a fan of Florida.

I know. Blasphemy. My bad.

The thing is, it's flat and it's muggy and it has about a gazillion too many amusement parks. It's just not my ideal vacay spot. Sorry.

I like Disney, but walking around Magic Kingdom in 95* heat, with about 853.92% humidity, buffeted by the 4th of July crowds for twelve hours straight was not enjoyable. If that's the happiest place on earth, than I have doubts as to where this planet is headed.

I don't like breaking a sweat when I stroll a block to get breakfast at 7:30am every morning, and I don't like the way it pours rain every afternoon, yet stays just as hot. I don't like the fact that there are no mountains, no valleys, no variation to the swampy flat landscape as far as I can see in any direction. I don't like that there are amusement parks everywhere, and of every theme and variation you could imagine--too many water parks to count, every movie-based ride imaginable, and even the Holy Land Experience, an entire park based around the Bible. Granted, my visit to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is probably on my list of top-amazing-moments-in-my-life-ever, but that has nothing to do with Orlando and everything to do with a genius British woman and an entire universe that she just randomly thought up.

Sorry, was that a rant? I seem to be very good at those, don't I?

Could you tell that I'm a little homesick? I absolutely cannot wait to get home. Have I mentioned that my mom is an amazing cook? Have I mentioned that it's cool and dry in Switzerland? Have I mentioned that there are these really amazing mountains everywhere? Have I mentioned that I'll be landing in exactly 9 days?

Excited? Me? Noooo.

the sunshine state

My first week as an RA at the Orlando Ballet School summer intensive has finally come to an end.

It just might have been the longest and most exhausting week of my life.

Summer intensives are exhausting to begin with, but I didn't expect my RA work to be quite so intense as well. It's not that I have a lot of duties, per say. It's more that I have to be the emotional support for eight fourteen-year-old girls, and then help lay down the law for a hundred and twenty more.

I love my girls. Most of them. The first couple days weren't a problem--we had to have a lot of meetings, spew out an endless number of rules, but everyone seemed well behaved and nice. By the end of the week, everyone was exhausted, and--as tends to happen when you stuff a hundred plus worn out teenagers in a dorm building with nothing to do and no freedom--the problems started emerging.

Bullying. I never expected that to be my biggest problem as an RA. I was prepared for homesickness, injuries, eating disorders, rule-breaking, and general girl cattiness, but I did not expect to find bullies. Maybe it's because I never really experienced bullying as a kid. I was exposed to, and partook in, that general obnoxiousness of pre- and young teen girls, but I never experienced the problem of the bully.

But here, where competitive, determined and aggressive girls from all walks of life are asked to live with each other in harmony, a bully has emerged--and of course, it had to be one of my girls.

I'm pretty sure that she's not aware that most of the hurtful things she says are wrong at all. The racist slurs that have been brought to my attention seem to be the fault of ignorance, not maliciousness. But still, she has a certain manipulative quality; she can make her little friends do exactly what she wants them to do, and she tries to manipulate me by cheerfully threatening an angry phone call from her mother.

I'm not sure how much of a problem she'll pose. She was relatively responsive when we had a little chat about being really careful about the things you say about other peoples' homes and cultures, and her bullying seems to be more of a consequence of her lifestyle than an outright attack. So we'll see.

Overall, it's going to be an interesting and valuable experience, I think. Exhausting, absolutely; frustrating, undoubtedly; but valuable just the same.