Well, sorry it has been a couple of days but I have not been able to find an empty computer when I was available. Several interesting things have happened recently. I have told many of you how annoyed I was with my town for the way that they were acting. Things came to head Thursday evening. A lot of guys were late for evening lineup when we go to the assembly. Our counselor Alex had to keep telling people to be quiet, and they were ignoring him. His assistant Perry then had to tell them to be quiet and they were ignoring him as well. It got to be bad enough that Perry told us we were going to walk in two straight lines to assembly and not talk.

As soon as we got downstairs the guys started talking, and when they got in trouble for it they started talking back. Things were not looking good at all, and I was pretty mad about it. I was mad that they thought that this was anywhere near appropriate. Every night up until this point they had been introducing the counselors from each of the dorms. The kids from that counselors city normally stood up and clapped, cheered, etc. Well, our guys were so worked up that they decided that they were not going to do anything at all.

As it turned out they didn't introduce counselors at all. There is a system here of rewarding the best preforming town in each county with a flag. The first night we won the flag. This was the third night of the flags, and we didn't get the flag, we came in last place.

At the city meeting that night all the guys were talking about why we came in last place. They were coming up with all of these silly ideas, like we just weren't being creative enough, and if we just tried harder with what we were already doing, etc.

After about ten minutes of this I stood up, still upset but not nearly as mad as I was earlier. I told the guys that I thought the problem was a severe lack of respect for the leaders. I talked about how even if you don't like your leaders you still need to respect them, and amazingly enough they listened. When I got up for all I knew, they might just ignore me and decide not to talk to me, but they listened. It was pretty cool because the change was almost immediate.

Since then our city has become unified in a way that I couldn't even have imagined. It has been pretty amazing. Last night, we won the flag, and things have been going great. I also got a hour nap, and as many of you know that just makes life better.