Three Amusing Differences About Our Lives in Philadelphia

1.  We walk to church here, one of maybe half a dozen families who can.  It seems like we are right next door at 0.7 miles away. We leave half an hour early.

In Riverton, that 0.5 mile drive seemed like halfway to the end of the world: did we have enough gas in the tank?  And we were still usually late.

2.  We have no automatic dishwasher here and must wash dishes once or twice a day, by hand. Partly because we run out of dishes, and partly so we don't encourage pests. (Interesting sidelight: none of the Riverton Gabe's have dishwashers now: us, Paul & Bethany, Lynne & Kit.)

At home, we couldn't be bothered to load the dishwasher but once a week.

3.  Several times we have gone out to the suburbs for activities or things.  The suburbs around Philadelphia feel similar to the suburbs around any city.  Similar big box stores and malls, similar traffic patterns.  We're just now realizing we could have more closely matched our Riverton lifestyle, by moving further out.

If we had opted for a suburban apartment, we would not have gotten the metropolitan flavor we love so much: a five-minute walk to anything:  stores,

 

restaurants (4-5 dozen),

grocery,

movie theaters.

Plus the nightly sirens going up the street.

We would have missed all that.

Stuff You Don't Want to See

If we received fan mail, we might expect someone to gripe:

"Hey Gabe, looks like you are having lots of fun. 

But we know it isn't all fun and games.  How about keeping it real for us?"

So here is a short blog of all the stuff no one really wants to see.

First, there is our work.

Then there is a lot of trash on the street.  Not actual photo of Philly.  This week.

There is road construction.

There is traffic (when we drive) on the street.

Parking on the street is kind of a pain.

Sometimes there are scary people on the street.

Hmmm.  Seems like the dark side of our adventure is the street. 

I should have guessed that, but sitting out on our patio hanging out over the street is still pretty delish!

649 New Friends--Or How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Somewhat by luck and happy accident, I got to be a counselor at Youth Conference this year. 550 young men and women, aged 14-18 converged on a little agrarian community in northeast Pennsylvania, called Kutztown (halfway between Reading and Allentown).  Also, 100 "adults" came as counselors.

There is a teaching university there, with a pretty campus, lots of dorms (w/o air conditioning *pant pant*) and a cafeteria big and fast enough to feed 650 people in less than an hour.

The kids were from five LDS stakes covering the eastern quarter of Pennsylvania, all the way down through Delaware.  I'm guessing about 14,000 square miles, taking in Scranton, Reading, Philadelphia, Valley Forge (our stake) and Wilmington, DE.  I was counselor to six young men from several of these stakes.  Yes, there are six young men there.  Look carefully.

The conference was very well planned, and used a lot of good technology, like having all of the counselors on a broadcast instant messaging system.  The registration was on-line, all of the announcements and changes were on-line, and the official photos of the official photographer were posted on Facebook ("2011 Youth Conference").

Field games on a steamy field were pretty fun.  Here is the hula hoop pass, which followed the wordless birthday line-up.

We "sat it" instead of "stacked it,"  but it took three tries and a lot of togetherness.

I'm always worried that someone at the marshmallow stuff will inhale 3 mallows, but it never happens.  You get a lot of explosive laughter, though.

And this gutterball game produced a disproportionate amount of frustration.  Most teams didn't finish before the ball went to ground.  It was probably the one game they didn't want to leave until they did it, though.

Food was plentiful and fast, with lots of choices.  I didn't hear any complaints.

There were devotionals (note the epidemic of narcolepsy here...)

...and workshops (intense photographer alert, lower right!).

And dances (two!) were fun as usual.  Youth dances are similar the world over: knots of friends rock and sway until a group number comes on, at which point the girls all scream and everybody does the equivalent of a line dance.  Slow dances are also successful at getting them to pair up and pay attention to each other.

My team was pretty cool.  They weren't too bummed out about getting an old guy counselor. Here's Kalin showing who he really is...

Brenden reviewing key lessons from the workshops...

Tyler heading to one of the most popular activities, lunch...

Daniel getting so fresh for the second dance.  Not easy to do in the tandoori ovens that were our dorm rooms, but Dan the man managed it.


Thom could be caught reading or throwing a Frisbee (and sometimes both) at most times...

And Sam showing some calm, although it was way more common to see him in a crowd with a big smile.
 

We all decided this would be the album cover photo, looking fresh and full of attitude.


But what I always love most about youth conference is the smiling faces of kids enjoying themselves with 649 new and old friends.

A special shout out to my roommate, another veteran of many youth conferences, Charlie.  We had a few delightful threads of discussion that could have taken all night, and really just await the right time or campfire to pick up again.

Youth conference is really mostly about the friends.

And I'm really happy to have all of these new ones.