Welcome to July!

This month rolled in nicely with unexpected cool temperatures and almost no humidity. Is this really Arkansas in July? While I have a feeling that the “dog days” aren’t too far beyond the horizon, I’m happy to relish in this relatively spring like weather for a few days.

This month we’re talking about a few things that are near and dear to my heart: travelling abroad, summer camp, and blog conferences. While these three topics seem unrelated, they really have a lot in common.

Attending summer camp is the dream of a lot of kids.  I spent between 2 and 6 weeks at summer camp every year growing up.  I loved my camp friends and all of the memories and would spend the other 46 weeks of the year looking forward to camp season.  Summer camp was where I belonged.  It didn’t matter whether I was the jock, the nerd, or the band geek.  I was IT at camp.  Everyone was! I was also quite the charmer at summer camp and broke more than a few hearts over the years.  “Julie loves __________(fill in the blank) 4-ever!” is carved all over the rafters of Ganderbrook Christian Camp.  Honestly though, that unabashed love that you can freely hand out when you’re a kid is really a wonderful thing.  At some point, we grow up and mature and with that we hand out our love a little more selectively than we did when we were ten.

Travelling abroad has some of the same mysteries as summer camp.  There is exploring to be done. Sites to be seen. Food to be tasted. Language barriers to be overcome.  The feeling you get stepping out of the plane and onto foreign soil is not all that different from climbing out of the van and walking up the steps to the camp lodge for the first time each summer.  There is excitement and anticipation, nervousness and even a little fear.

Blog conferences are an oddly delicious combination of the two.  The location (at least here in Arkansas) is a lot like a summer camp.  Okay it IS a summer camp!  We come to it with some of the excitement as we do summer camp or travelling abroad.  We are heading into our element.  We have spent months or even years learning the language.  We’ve check out all the sites(bloggers) ahead of time. And we come hoping to have adventure and to leave feeling like we came, we saw and we conquered.

Right now, your ARWB Team is hard at work planning a conference that we hope will knock your socks off.  We can not wait to hang out on the porch or sit around the campfire with our old friends and our new friends by our side! Hopefully YOU will be joining us at AWBU2013!

This month we’ll be hearing from several ARWB members about their personal experiences at summer camp, travelling abroad and blog conferences.  Do you have a story you’d like to share? Contact julie@arkansaswomenbloggers.com if you do!