Keep in mind, dudes and dudettes: I'm not giving any awards for best company or hottest counselors or anything. That would do nothing but make people who didn't win feel bad. You won't be getting me to designate some favorite company or co-counselors, because they were all awesome. Really. I love all of my youth and co-counselors like my own family, and I don't regret knowing a single one of them.
THE EFY AWARDS
Best Variety Show- Ypsilanti '09/Mansfield '09
It's difficult to pick exactly which one of these shows was more epic. Ypsilanti had Napoleon Dynamite, a wicked violinist, and a sweet musical skit about missionaries. It also had a guy with a hole in his lung playing the piano. The hole wasn't part of the act. We found out about that later. But still. Hard. Core.
Mansfield had whips, a song about toast, and a full on rock band. And not the video game kind. The real deal. I might have to give a slight edge to Mansfield since literally half of the show was my group. Of course, there have been a lot of pretty A+ shows, but these two stand high above them all.Lamest Variety Show- Provo 2B '09
Seriously guys, this was probably the most unexpected letdown. There were what, 700 kids at that session? By way of statistical probability, it should have been a cooler show than any others I've been to. But for some reason, a large portion of the acts were really lame. I actually fell asleep for part of it. Not that all of it was bad, there were some really good parts, like the song from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and the Taylor Swift dance number. (Don't judge me. You would understand if you had been there.) But the bulk of the show was lame guitar songs. Picture an hour of amateurs playing Plain White T's. That's the Provo 2B Variety Show 2009.
Best Dining Hall- Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH
They had a guy who would make any sandwich you could come up with. You could have it toasted if you wanted, and there were tons of kinds of meat, cheese, bread, and fixins. Best pastrami I've ever had. They also had pizza at just about every meal, pasta, salad, and several entrees that changed every meal. To top it all off, the staff were the coolest ladies ever. They weren't just friendly- we joked around and had great conversations all the time. They were genuine. Legit, Holmes. I do mark the dining hall down for the napkin setup, though. Napkins were only found in these tall dispensers at the doorways to the dining area, so if you needed one while you were eating, you had to get up and walk across the room. There was, however, a little basket on every table with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and relish. Thank goodness for that. I can't count the number of times I've been eating, and then all of a sudden I was like, “MUSTARD! MUSTARD! SOMEONE HAND ME SOME MUSTARD, I NEED SOME RIGHT NOW!”
Lamest Dining Hall- Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
This probably comes due to the assembly line nature of Provo sessions. They have so many friggin youths at a time that lunches have to just be a sandwich, chips, and a bottle of water while you sit on the grass outside. I don't blame them for it, but it still sucks.
Best Dorms- Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, AZ
Here you have a quaint little suite. Two bedrooms with a little living room in the middle. Nothing super fancy, but as far as dorms go, it was pretty nice. I didn't like the hallway setup, though. Each wing was one looooong hallway that turned a couple of times so the whole building looked kind of like a huge, angular 3. The only entrances were in the lobby in the middle and at the very end of each hall. Well, we were only allowed to use the lobby entrances. The ones on the end were STRICTLY in case of fire ONLY. Guess where my room was.
Worst Dorms- Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI
Cold, bare floors, shared bathrooms and metal doors. The doors wouldn't have been so bad, except that I could only get a wireless signal if my door was open. You couldn't get a signal in your room if the door was closed. In a dormitory.
Coolest Campus Staff- Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH
Again, this is because of the ladies in the dining hall. And the sandwich guy. The other staff we worked with were pretty cool too, including a student who was the only Mormon that went to that school, so she helped us all week.
Nicest Campus- Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL
It's really no surprise that so many people like to vacation in Florida. This campus sits right on the coast at Tampa Bay, and it's full of the coolest trees and stuff. Even the storms were cool.
As we had our games night on a soccer field next to the beach, this crazy intense storm worked its way across the bay towards us. It looked like something out of the apocalypse. I was expecting some giant spaceship to burst out of it. We could have died from all the lightning, but it was cool to look at. 
I also saw this cool spider.
Lamest Campus- Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA
Every desk in the lecture halls was covered in graffiti. So were the bathroom stalls. It was like a reform school for idiots. The buildings were unimpressive, and the dorm was at the bottom of this relentless hill, so we had to climb it several times a friggin day.
Coolest Non-Company Youth- Plymouth 02 '09
This might have something to do with the small size of the session. Since there were so few of us, it was easy to get to know a lot of other people. Really cool kids.
