Last week was one of the best weeks of my life.  I've officially been at this job for about a month, and one of the first things they asked me to do was take a group of students camping for 4 days and 3 nights up in the Santa Monica Mountains.  Could I have landed a better gig? 

Well, the time was amazing and I dare to say even pivotal for some of the students that we had the pleasure of bringing along.  Most of the students had never been camping before, many had never even been to a National Park.  There was a range of students from 13 year olds who had never spent a night away from home before to inner-city youth that had spent some months of their lives incarcerated.  Needless to say, this trip had the capacity to affect each individual in a variety of ways.  The next few posts will be directly from them and maybe you can experience a little bit of what we did by reading their words and feelings as the days went by.  I haven't even quite processed my own feelings from a lot of this trip, but I know that my life was touched in a very special way and I look forward to our debrief meeting tonight to kind of see where everyone has landed thus far.  I'll fill you in on it in the next few days!