Camp Week 6

 

At this point in the summer, I have been on every camp and had work crew the week before. It was my turn to finally have a repeat camp and I got Elementary Camp! At the start of the week I was still pretty sick, so as much as I had wanted to be more excited I knew they needed a lot more of my energy than I had. I ended up in the health center for a day and a half and I thought they would hate me when I came back... I was wrong. I got back into program during rest hour and they had all made me the cutest get well soon cards!

Once I was back, the rest of the week went by pretty smooth! I had a great section of girls that I loved hanging out with, even though sometimes I got pretty annoyed when they weren't quiet during rest hour. The theme is always such a blast with EC! This is also the camp that tends to have the best stories. I only had one good episode with a little girl this week and it wasn't even that bad. She had accidentally hit another girl in our section just a little to hard on the shoulder. Due to her guilt, she locked herself in the bathroom stall and refused to come out in fear of hurting everyone around her. I eventually got her to emerge and show her how no one was mad at her and now she knew to control her actions better so that it didn't happen again. It was a cute moment. 

xoxo, tay

Camp Week 5

Midsummer Retreat was this past weekend and the entire team stayed at camp to hang out and rest in order to push through the rest of the summer. Week 5 became a blessing and a curse for me due to being assigned work crew. Everyone on team gets work crew at some point during summer and of course I got lucky enough to get it on one of the biggest weeks of the summer! I was happy to have a break from interacting with campers. 

Work Crew is exactly what it sounds like: work. From cleaning to preparing food, we did everything behind the scenes to help keep camp running. The experience was both fun and exhaustingly rewarding in so many ways. I started my week off kind of rough because I got sick, but I bounced back as best I could and threw myself into the work with the rest of my team. I didn't really hit my wall until about Thursday during my lunchtime dish shift. I went from being totally functioning to feeling like i was going to die right there in the dish room...

I did take away some good things about work crew. This experience has helped me gain a new appreciation for each work crew. I am more aware of my actions now, especially at meal times, and I try to do what I can to help them out, even if its just making sure my table is as clean as possible after  each meal.

P.S. Sorry this is so late, the internet here is pretty shaky...

xoxo, tay

Camp Week 4

First day of week 4 was on the 4th of July so, of course, I had to show some American pride!

On EC, the program theme was superhero's!

My good friend Sammie and I had to take a goofy picture at a fake wedding on Saturday for midsummer retreat

Thanks for being the best fake wedding date a girl could ask for!

Our Saturday ended with pretty sparklers on the dock and our attempt at cute candid pictures!

After day camp, I was really nervous to be assigned elementary camp, but I knew I would have to face it eventually. I was assigned EC for week 4 and I am happy to say that I enjoyed it a lot more than I had anticipated. EC and Day Camp are two completely different things and even the kids seem to be different. Of course, every group has a few kids that will cause problems. The theme for the EC program is superhero's. It is well put together and the kids really seemed to enjoy it! All week the kids are trained to be superhero's by Shane Williams, an insurance agent who is actually The Bearded Wonder. The villain for the week is Grubseel and the kids absolutely HATE him by the end of it!

After the kids left on Saturday the start of Midsummer Retreat began with the intention of giving us all a chance to rest and be fresh again to finish the last half of the summer. It started with small group lunches and that evening was the "wedding" of Grubseel and Miller Girl. Yes, it is the fake villain used for camp. Miller Girl is a "ghost" that supposedly haunts Miller Dock where the ski boat is kept. Not sure where the idea came from, but the fake wedding was put on in our chapel and everyone brought a date (shoutout to my awesome date, Trace!). Basically it was an excuse to throw a party and bond as a team. The next day we had a huge lake day that included tubing, barbecue, and hanging out.

Overall, I have really been enjoying my summer here. It will be hard to leave at the end, but for now I am just going to focus on the kids and making sure that they have the best week at camp they can possibly have.

xoxo, tay 

Camp Week 3

The weeks here are really flying by and the camp fun is starting to take its toll on us counselors. The weekends are less crazy and tend to be spent sleeping, chilling, and eating Moe's. 

This last week I was assigned to middle school. When I heard past team membered talk about this age group I heard a lot of mixed reviews. Some don't care for these kids while others absolutely adore this group. I think it has to do with them being weird and not as afraid of expressing themselves compared to high schoolers, who would being trying to "play it cool." 

Middle school was one of my most enjoyable weeks so far. I'm not sure how much that counts though, considering it was only week 3. I was kind of unsure about middle school, but I realized that just because I didn't necessarily enjoy other middle schoolers when I was that age doesn't mean that they all behave badly. I made sure to go into the week with an open mind and I am so happy that I made that decision because I had an awesome week . 

One of the things I really struggled with for this age group was getting the kids to respect me. Some of the boys who came from rough homes liked to try and intimidate others so they could do what they want. Sometimes they wanted to do things that weren't fair to other campers, like skip the entire 9-square line. Of course, they were caught a lot. I tended to hang out around the 9-square court during free time so I tended to catch them a lot, so they didn't really care for me and tried several times to scare me, even saying they would target me on the court. I took it as patiently as I could, even when it became extremely frustrating. 

My favorite part of the week was hanging out with my cabin girls. Cabin free time was a blast and we would make lots and lots of friendship bracelets just about every single night. I really hope that maybe next year I see those girls again!

xoxo, tay