A week as Miss Thousand Islands...

I believe that as a titleholder it is very important to publish a blog post at least once a week, to keep my followers and readers up to date on my life and my plans for Miss T.I. I also really enjoy writing and by writing for fun, not just writing papers and essays for school, I am improving my writing skills, which Shelby would say is highly important, not only as a titleholder, but as a Public Relations professional and a successful person in general. So, although I have yet to make a Miss T.I. appearance and am unsure when I will first get to wear my crown and sash publicly, I have had a busy, yet wonderful, last week at home, that I would like to write about.

Tomorrow, I will be driving to Ithaca with my family and boyfriend, Tony, to move into my very first apartment where I will reside for the school year. Before I tell you about this, let's rewind back to Monday.

Not only was this week my last week at home, it was also my last week of work. This summer I was employed by the Crescent Yacht Club Junior Division, Inc. Junior Division, for short, is a Swim and Sail day camp program that is run on Lake Ontario at the Crescent Yacht Club in Chaumont, NY. I was the Senior Lifeguard and Water Safety Instructor (which is the reason I had a terrible racerback tan line for the pageant!) So, aside from teaching swim lessons and lifeguarding, my job basically entailed supervising a group of awesome kids, ages 6 - 16, and hanging out in the sun on the lake all day. Pretty cool, huh? Anyway, in our last week we try to have as much fun as possible. The week started out with swim tests, which were a breeze compared to swim lessons, and then finished the week off with sponge dodgeball, water wars (which took place on Sawmill Bay while the campers sailed and the counselors were on the motor boats), and Watermelon Olympics, which entails covering watermelons in Crisco and then completing a series of events - the team whose watermelon breaks first, loses. Even though the Crisco left a big mess on our picnic tables, the activities were all a lot of fun. The week ended with the annual Awards Ceremony. Although this was my first time as a staff member, I had attended the ceremony for many years as my younger brother, Sky (who is also on staff), was a camper for many years, and I was in the program for a short time as well. As the swim instructor, I had four awards to give and present - two Most Improved, and two Best Swimmers (one for the younger group, one for the older). For each award, the staff member who is presenting, writes a brief, suspense building speech, and reads it to the group of campers, family, and friends, before announcing the recipient. Just a quick and interesting note about these awards: the Swim & Sail program is 79 years old and many of the awards which are trophies and plaques have been around since the beginning of the program. When a camper wins an award, they get to keep the trophy or plaque, carefully of course, for a year and have their name and winning year engraved before returning it the next year. Many of the trophies have winners dated back to the first year and many times, campers win an award that their parent or grandparent may have won many years ago! All in all, the entire ceremony was lovely and I believe that the recipients of my swimming awards were very grateful and I hope that I made them feel as special as I did, and still do, about winning Miss Thousand Islands.



With the rest of the CYC Jr. Division Swim & Sail Staff (From L to R: Me, Mark Derbyshire, Tommy Barber, Luke Norman, Billy Monks, Kent Derbyshire, and Sky Bocciolatt; not shown, Nick Sellers.)




With my brother, Sky :-)


So, now that the craziness has halted for at least today, I am rushing to get ready to go back to school. As I said earlier, I will be moving into an apartment. Even though my apartment is an on campus apartment, it will be a big change from the dorm rooms I have lived in for the past two years. I will be living with three of my friends, Lindsey, Monique, & Cassidy and since I lived in a single dorm room for the past two years, I am excited to have roommates! It has been a lot of fun shopping for the apartment, although I still have lots more that I need to get. Because of my busy summer with producing and playing Cinderella in Cinderella, and then preparing for Miss Thousand Islands, on top of my 40 hour a week job, I really hadn't had much time to shop until this weekend. Luckily, I have a few days before classes start and I will have time then to shop and buy any last minute items. Currently, I have nothing packed and we are set to leave for Ithaca around 11am tomorrow. I usually would try not to put something like this off, but I really don't like packing, especially for school because I never want to leave anything behind but don't have enough luggage to carry all of my clothing and other possessions! Well, with that said, I suppose I should try to at least unzip the suitcases... :-)

Pictures of the new apartment to come!