Comfort Zone

I like to think of myself as kind of a quiet person, that is until you get to know me. I have always been proud of the fact that I have a few hidden talents that not too many people know about. We all know that I LOVE to geocache that is no secret. Well 2 years ago at school I was talking with a couple of teachers about it and explaining it to them and they wanted to do it for an advanced math group. This really made me happy, I love introducing people to the sport and I love having a reason to play with my gps. Now the down side to teaching a class to geocache is that it isn't as easy as you would think, typically you could just pick a cache and go find it, well we couldn't take the kids off school grounds which meant I had to create some courses and find some containers to hide stuff in. Now I'll admit I really do love doing this and it was so much fun for me to come up with different ideas of how to hide the caches. So my thoughts were to mark all these waypoints and send the kids loose looking for them. Well someone else took it a step farther and decided we needed to actually do some teaching, that is totally stepping out of my comfort zone, I get really nervous when I get up and try to talk in front of a lot of people, and now they want me to teach these kids and their teachers how to use a gps. So it was decided that it was going to be a team teaching activity, which made me feel better, the first person would do a quick explanation and history of the game and then I would teach them how to use the gps. I will admit it was so much fun and all the kids I talked to after told me how much fun it was.
So this last school year nothing was really ever mentioned of doing it again, some of us para's talked about it a little bit and actually went out and found real geocaches. Then close to the end of the school year one teacher remembered what we had done and was gung ho to do it again. Thank goodness I had saved everything from the year before. So we set out and did it all again this year, and of course the kids had a great time. The only downfall was that this year lots of other kids and teachers wanted to do it, but we just didn't have the time or the resources, so lucky for me I was off the hook! Well after we were done with all the classes, one of the para's decided that we needed to get a grant and get some gps's for our school. This really shocked me, they want to keep doing stuff with gps's, but don't want to have to borrow them from people.
Here are a few pictures of caching at school, the kids really had a great time.

So we did some research and at the end of the year the principal came to us and told us she knew of a pretty sure thing, told us to figure out what we need, get some estimates and send her a paragraph. Well our grant was accepted, so now we will be getting all new gps's for our school.
So now back to the reason for this post, like I said I think I am a quiet person and I definitely don't like stepping out of my comfort zone, well through this whole process I have had to call and talk with people that I don't know and ask them for help (I don't like asking for things). The people I have talked with have been wonderful (or at least the ones that are willing to help us) and they are very excited for the new opportunity for our school.
So now I have been told that when all the teachers come back the principal wants to do a geocaching activity with all the teachers. Yet again I am going to be stepping out of my comfort zone, I have been told that I have to decided which caches that each team is going to find, then set out some caches just for our staff, plus I have a feeling I'm going to have to teach our teachers how to use the gps. Let's just say I'm a little stressed.
I started thinking to things in my life that I have had to do to step out of my comfort zone, one of the big things was going to girls camp without my husband, he is always the one to do all the lifting, he always starts the camp chef and just takes care of the things that I don't want to. Well I didn't have him and had to learn that I could step up to the plate and do those things and guess what I did it and things went great, we ate well, we were warm and we all had a good time. Well this year for girls camp they put me in charge of 4th level which means I have to make sure everything gets to prior to and at camp. Let me just say this has been a huge project, but things are starting to fall into place and I'm really getting excited about going. So as much as I love my comfort zone (and want to go back to having my secrets) I am learning that stepping out of that zone is a good thing for me.
This week I will be stepping out of my zone again I will be towing the trailer to camp all by myself, let's just say I'm a little nervous, but I know I can do it. I can honestly say I think my comfort zone is expanding, but I'm ready for things to slow down a little bit so I can get comfortable in my new zone.