Weekend Camping

We took our daughter and her friend camping over the weekend.  Her friend Ana had never been camping before.  How can that be true? After all we live in Idaho where camping and hiking are normal family activities over the summer.  I am pretty sure most people have some sort of camping story to share.  Boy scout camp, girl scout camp, church camp, or family reunion, there are always plenty of opportunities to go camping.  It was that way with our family, anyway, but somehow Ana never had that.

I found out that there are different kinds/ideas of camping that depend on where you are from or how you grew up.  For example, our sister-in-law used to think anything without room-service is camping (since then she has been reconditioned to the Idaho way of camping). I also found out from a friend who moved to Idaho from New Jersey that camping means sleeping in a tent.  It doesn't matter where, in your back yard or in a resort that comes with room-service, as long as you sleep in a tent, then it is camping. 

So I thought I will share how we do camping in our family. This was a very easy (beginner) camping trip.  My daughter picked this campground, and it had water pumps, outhouses, and waste service.  It was about 30 minutes by car to a store and where we can get signal for our phones.  A perfect place for the first time camper. 

  
We cooked dinner over the camp fire.  We call it a "Tin foil dinner". I know some people call it a "Hobo dinner".  We had steamed salmon with vegetables and some home made bread toasted on the grill. And s'mores for dessert.

  

Nobody was awake enough to take a picture, but for breakfast we had chocolate chip pancakes with bacon, onion, and summer squash cooked over the fire. 

For lunch before we took down the camp we had chicken stir fry with vegetables and baby carrots with hummus.  Ana has a diet restriction so she survived on a lot of steamed broccoli, home made bread, carrots, hummus, and crackers. 

There were plenty of wild flowers to enjoy around the camp ground and on our hike to the nearby hot springs.

We went on a little hike.  There was a great view of the river and the hot springs. 

There are about a dozen small hot pools in the area.  Temperatures range from very hot to lukewarm.  It gets cooler as it gets closer to the river.

This one was my favorite. Under this pretty water fall there is a big enough space for five or six people to soak in the natural hot spring.

When it gets too hot from sitting in the hot pool you can always go by the river to cool off.

Ana had so much fun that she asked us to take her camping again.  Maybe we can take her backpacking next time and show her the real wilderness of Idaho

Learning to read again: thoughts on reading part two

When  I moved to America I had six years of useless English education.  I knew my alphabet and a few phrases like, "How are you?" and "I am fine, Thank you."  We spent a lot of time learning grammar and spelling.  I could read a little bit, but I didn't know what I was reading. Speaking was even worse.

I remember the first time I went to the public library with my husband.  Looking at the shelves full of books, I painfully realized that I couldn't read any of them.  As long as I remember I was always able to read whatever books I chose.  But there I was in the library with endless possibilities of stories, adventures, and knowledge that wasn't for me to take.  I am not sure what I felt at that moment: frustration, hopelessness, maybe anger about my limitation. 

I spent time studying English at home and I even took a class to help  with learning the language.  I checked out some children's books from the library to read.  I loved Aesop's fables when I was kid.  I mean, how hard can that be; I already knew the stories. But whenever I picked up a book to read I had to keep looking for words that I didn't know in the dictionary.  It wasn't fun to read anymore.  It was like doing homework and it seemed like I wasn't going anywhere learning the new language.  I was very unhappy with my progress.

After about a year of struggle I decided to try a new method.  Instead of looking for the meaning of every word I didn't know I decided to focus on the overall story of the book. This way I knew what the story was about and I learned to enjoy the book again.  I still had to look up some key words in the dictionary, but I was no longer worrying about knowing every word in the book.  As time went by I could figure out the meaning of the words by context.

My very first book I read in English was Winnie the Pooh.  I know it is a children's book, but it gave me a great feeling of accomplishment.  I was so happy because I knew that the door was finally open for me to join the world of reading. I have come a long way since that first book.  Now I read an average of 50 books a year.  Happy reading to you all.