The worst 4 days of my life- I'm not kidding

I had a hard time trying to figure out what the title of this one should be. Here were some of the contenders:

• Biggest waste of $280
• I have strep throat
• I don't actually want to play basketball anymore

With those 3 additional titles you should be able to figure out how this blog is gonna go. Actually, let's just make those titles little subtitles and I'll tell you why each of them is true...

Biggest waste of $280
Before I begin my rant about money, let me say that I am thankful that we went to a different camp this year than last year because last year's camp cost $360. That's way too much for 4 or 5 days of camp where 2 of the days are spent riding for 8 hours in the car.
So this year the b-ball camp was at Gonzaga for 4 days. (i don't really remember what I wrote in the last post so I hope I'm not too repetitive) For those of you who don't know where Gonzaga is, it's in Spokane, only a few minutes away from Whitworth where we have gone to camp in the past. So far I have given you a lot of unneeded information, but this will go somewhere, I promise.
We left Shelton at 7:00 am on Thursday and arrived in spokane at around 1:00. We took a few pit stops for food and at the stuff. Then, before we went to Gonzaga we went to a mall in spokane. Some of the girls thought it was really cool and big. I didn't find it that impressive. Anyway, we ate lunch at the food court where I ordered a slice of pizza. It was all fine and good. No sore throat. (if you read bullet or "subtitle" number two, that comment will make more sense).
Now I'm skipping a few hours ahead. We played our first game of camp and did some individual skills and a thing called "team concepts." Team concepts was one of the things that made the $280 too expensive. I didn't find those 40 mins. to be very enlightening. Anyway, we did those three things and.....wait.....I never mentioned that the whole time we were playing and sitting and doing drills on the TENNIS COURTS the temperature was 105 degrees. I capitalize TENNIS COURTS because they actually create more heat and cause the temp you're feeling to be 10 degrees hotter. Great.
By the time we were done with the things I mentioned, we had dinner and watched the varsity play a game. Then we headed back to our hotel (more on the hotel later). At dinner, we had an outdoor bbq, which was really lame because it was still scorchingly hot and there is practically no shade where they had the bbq set up. I ate a burger and some other stuff, but as I ate, my throat began to not want me to eat or swallow or anything. By night time, my throat was so swollen I could hardly swallow water or even my own spit....nasty.
I'm sure that what I have written so far has not convinced you that this camp was a waste of money, but give me time...you will be convinced.

I have strep throat
Let's jump ahead a few days from thursday to today...an hour ago actually. I just got back from the doctor where they swabbed my throat and it immediately tested positive that I do have strep throat. Big time suckiness. The worst part is not being able to swallow. It's not cool. My mom made me jello and I couldn't eat it. Can anyone tell me what is softer than jello???
Ok, so back to thursday night. I didn't want to be at camp in the first place, then I started to feel really crappy. My throat really hurt, I was hot, and I was tired. I'm sure the rest of the girls felt the last two things, but it just makes my throat situation seem worse if I add them to my list :) I had a hard time sleeping Thurs. night because I couldn't breathe normally. And maybe you don't know this, but I learned it over the weekend- you have to swallow a lot in your sleep. Those of you who drool excessively in your sleep need to work on sleep swallowing. Not being able to swallow was very hard and I ended up drooling so much in my sleep and I hardly ever drool. It was really gross.
So I woke up Friday morning at around 7:00 and felt way worse than the night before. I told my coach i wasn't feeling well and she could tell i didn't feel well because i guess i looked like it too. Awesome. (if for some reason you don't really know me very well and you're reading this, i should let you know that i'm very sarcastic and sarcasm isn't the easiest thing to create in writing. just keep that in mind as you read this :)
Our team had a game at 9:00 and my coach told me that she would just sub me in for people here and there so I didn't have to play a ton. I ended up playing about 5 mins out of that game. Then we had the extremely useful team concepts...grrr and a 3 on 3 tournament at the tennis courts. I sat out the 3 on 3, which actually turned out alright because there were 7 girls on the team and when you take me out that makes 6...2 perfect 3 on 3 teams. That math was for you Molly :)
Lunch was next. I went through the line and got some food. This is what I could tolerate eating- 3 cherry tomatoes, 1 little slice of cucumber, and 3 bites of soft looking snickerdoodle. Since I was so tired, i just laid my head down on the table and tried to sleep. I think I dozed off once, but i never really slept. Actually, I cried a little bit. My throat hurt that bad and i really didn't want to be at b-ball camp.
After my coaches realized that I really couldn't eat anything and I really didn't feel good they decided to take me back to the hotel. Here's the quick story about the hotel:

The camp overbooked the Gonzaga dorms so they had to send some teams to nearby hotels. Our team was chosen because we were one of the teams that had to travel the farthest to get there. We were all so excited. We got our own bathrooms/showers, bigger beds (I didn't have to share one!), a pool, TV, and best of all AC! It turned out to be a great situation :)

So the varsity coach, Wallwork, took me back to the hotel and I stayed there until dinner. I went back and tried to eat again. This time my meal consisted of a meatball and a half, and 2 bites of fried rice. That's it. No joke. I then went to my team's last game of the day and kept the score and ran the clock and stuff. It was good to be involved. After that I went and saw the trainer who took my temp. and I had no fever, but he didn't even look in my throat to see if he could tell me if I needed go to a doctor or something. He just said to drink lots of water and get more sleep. What a helpful guy. I already knew that.
My coach took me back to the hotel and I stayed there the rest of the night...and all day Saturday....and all morning Sunday. The hotel bed and I were best friends :) I slept, ate nothing, watched a lot of tv, and hardly talked to anyone at all. Wait, I lied. My mom had a friend (actually more like a friend's sister) who lives in Spokane come and look at my throat (since no one else would) and bring me a milkshake and some cough drops and stuff. That was very nice.
She decided that I probably had strep and she was right.

I don't actually want to play basketball anymore
This is a very true statement. I think I knew this before the whole camp experience, but i went to camp partially because i wanted to give b-ball another try and partially because we had already paid and I didn't have a good reason to back out...until i got there of course....stupid.
So you may be like, wait a second, Lauree loves basketball. Why would she want to stop playing? When did she decide that?
I have kind of been feeling this way since the middle to end of last season. I think it's mostly because I know what I want to do with my life and basketball is DEFINITELY not it. It has been something that is really hard for me to decide and admit. I've lost lots of hours of sleep over this, but I really do think it's best for me to focus on school and work and accomplishing what i want to do with life. I know i'm not going to go far with basketball. I know i'm not that great of a player. I don't want to waste my time with something that i'm not going to pursue in the future. All of this is VERY hard to admit and even think about because I still love basketball and I still enjoy it, but i really am done playing competitively. I'm sure i will miss playing during b-ball season and I will miss my friends and there will probably be a void for a while, but I believe it's the right decision. I don't want to be uneasy and worrying all season like I was last year.
This isn't a set in stone final decision about not playing next season, but it's almost for sure.

Not wanting to play ball next season is definitely a big reason why this camp was a waste of money and time.

I had a lot of time to think about all of these things during my sick days at camp and it's all very hard for me. We'll see how it all turns out, but now you know why I had the 4 worst days of my life.

Thanks for reading this extra long post. And if you didn't actually read it, that's ok. I skim too :)