I knew it wasn't going to be a good day today when I showed up to camp and the water was out. You might not think that's such a bad thing. How much of a problem can that cause? First of all, the street into the campus was closed (they were digging it up to try to find the water main break). After I drove down the alley looking for a way into the parking lot, I stopped off at the cafeteria to get a soda (the heat index was 102º yesterday and today was starting out hot and muggy). Did you know that you need water to mix with the carbonation and syrup to form Dr Pepper? So I headed up to my classroom drinkless, only to find the maintenance guy putting up "out of order" signs on all the restroom doors. Oh my goodness. When I asked about this, I was told to tell my campers to "hold it." Were they serious??? Luckily, the dormitories across campus still had water, so I decided to take the kids on a "field trip" over to the dorms to wash hands and use the bathroom before lunch. Water problem solved, but then the electrical stuff started acting up. When the kids tried plugging our brand new battery packs into their robots, we found that last year's teacher swapped out all the round battery connectors with square ones. Why oh why is beyond me, but square pegs do not fit into round holes, especially when electricity is involved. So I ran over to the electrical department and found an instructor to help me cut off both connectors and wire the batteries directly to the robots (on the positive side, the electrical building had water, so I was able to stop in to use the bathroom while the teacher was looking for the wire cutters). There's a "Women in Engineering" camp going on at the same time as my robotics camp. My one female camper and I snuck up there this afternoon to check it out. They were making different kinds of tracks for rolling marbles into a paper cup. I think I may have to see if I can switch camps next year. Maybe I can just be an assistant to the person in charge of rolling marbles into a paper cup. It would sure be easier than finicky robots and teenage boys.
