Apologies for all the back-blogging that I'm going to have to do. This one is especially ill-fleshed-out, so please excuse it. I shall edit, correct, etc. it when I have time. Just FYI, the names for the most part in this blog have been changed to protect the identities of those at camp (campers, staff, etc.). Hope y'all enjoy - many apologies for the long posts!
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It’s super late (10:30pm), and we just got back from watching “Crash” as a training session. Such an intense movie, but good, I guess. I don’t think it should have won all the awards that it did (can’t remember them, should call Linda or Michael), but it was good nonetheless.
Okay. First day of training. Boring as hell, but it did have its moments.
Didn’t seem like I would get off to a good start, because I woke up at 3:30am, 4:30am, and 6:30am. But interestingly, I didn’t wake up when my watch alarm went off at 6:45am. Which was bad: didn’t get my morning walk, didn’t get my morning leisurely internet time, and didn’t get some legit am chill time. But whatever. Emily was up and luckily I woke up about 7:30am and had time to dress, wash my face, grab my stuff, and rush over to the dining hall to set up breakfast for Basswood. I timed it perfectly, because I had just set up the table when I saw them approaching down the walkway – it was great! (Or, as the Brits say, “brilliant!”) We had baked eggs (the stove top/griddle was broken), sausages, and cheese popovers. It was great! The campers loved it! The cheese popovers were certainly the highlight!
After breakfast we went back to the cabin to chill for a while until we hung out. Unfortunately, we missed the “morning stretches” at 9:15am, but went to bike ride at around 9:30am. Melissa doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle (hasn't ridden in about 5 years to her guesstimate). David worked on breaking and had a great time, Chris worked on just riding fast and riding up the slight hill up to the bike barn, and Cal really enjoyed being on his bike. It was pretty funny though, wherever I stood, they would suddenly come up from all around and stop and talk to me, so in order to keep the riding I had to keep moving, walking slowly around, encouraging them, asking them for ideas on what shapes to ride in with and where to go on their bikes in that little clearing. It was great fun! The guys really enjoyed it!
At 10:00am I made my way over to the Upper Lodge to start training. Eventually we were all gathered (12 of us in total), but the lecturer person didn’t show up until well after 10am. It was quite frustrating. Very awkward silences, etc. I met Orlando and Carissa first. According to hot Andrew-the-medicine-man, Orlando's cousin is some famous baseball player Christopher Webber or some such. I didn't really believe the story, and Andrew didn’t believe him either, but Orlando kept insisting. I dunno about the baseball, but here's what I could about Chris Webber the basketball player. He is actually 34 years old and probably has a couple of kids if I could guess. He still lives at home with his parents, but whatevs. His choice. He graduated from Something Valley or Valley Something College in Mississippi (where he still lives). He took the greyhound up and said it was hell. I had a little giggle about that and he agreed that he looked quite comical in a greyhound bus (he’s 6 feet). Quite interesting. Most of the new staff is from here in Minnesota (which greatly amuses me).
Here I think are the names of my fellow new staff members: Carissa, Orlando, Tom, Adam, Ryan, Annie, Veronica, Josh, Emily, Rachel, and Elizabeth. They’re all quite nice, and it’ll be great having such a large group with which to go through training and initiation.
We did lots of sessions, lectures, form-filling-out, health checks, a quick tour, workshops, etc. I really like Cindy, one of the seasonal (summer) program leaders here. This is her fourth and final year at Camp Friendship, which is sad. She’s going into law, though, so watch out! She’s got a great sense of humor and will say anything to make sure the talking points stick in our heads. Haha. We were all supposed to have lunch together today, but I forgot and when I went to visit Basswood I sat down and had lunch with them. Tomato soup (poured from a water pitcher, quite interesting, fairly disgusting looking, but Cal and David slurped it right up! Cal even finished off what Chris didn’t eat, which was a considerable amount because Chris doesn’t much care for tomato soup), grilled cheese sandwiches (which were surprisingly great, and were of course eaten with mayonnaise by Melissa), and the most amazing fruit I’ve ever had not at home – so fresh and surprising! I ate a ton of the fruit! Next time I may get nothing but fruit!
After lunch we went for more sessions and had a session with Matt (my village leader) and Jon Salmon (the guy who hired me and who is year-round staff). It was on ADD/ADHD, expectations, rewards, consequences, etc. There were certainly moments that held our attentions, but for most of the time my mind wandered dangerously. I kept having to remind myself, "Focus! Focus, Mei! They're saying important stuff! FOCUS!!!!"
Basswood went for a camp out on the island today, which I super sad that I’m missing right now, super bummed. BUT I got to help Kingfisher (Rachel is actually assigned to Kingfisher) which has adult male campers who use wheelchairs. I met Charlie, another Chris, Josh, and August (they call him Skeeter). They're doing a campout in the 100 acres (which is over behind Whipporwill not too far away), and so they grilled cheeseburgers, had chips, heated up corn on the fire, and had fabulous s’mores. They are all super amazing people and I had the best time talking to, feeding, and joking around with Charlie and Josh! It was so much fun! I didn’t eat a cheeseburger, but I did have a s’more and a couple of graham crackers and a couple pieces of the chocolate. It reminded me again why I don’t like milk chocolate – too slipper, thickly, unappetizingly sweet. Boo.
We then went at around 7:30pm to Camp Friendship Idol in the gym and had an amazing time! The campers loved standing up and singing in front of everyone, and the last song that was sung involved everyone standing up and dancing and singing to “YMCA” – it was absolutely brilliant!
After the Idol show Emily and I came back to the cabin to take out our contacts (must remember to get more contacts when I go home! I have an appointment at the eye doctor on the Monday that I’m supposed to go back to Atlanta – poopy). We met Elizabeth and “popped over to the dining hall” for a snack, hoping for chocolate cake. Sadly there was none, so we contented ourselves with bagels. Emily and I split a sesame seed bagel. We made it back over to the Lower Lodge in order to watch “Crash.” I’ll discuss my issues with that movie later. Grrr there are just some things about that movie that make me so mad.
Throughout the day the entire group (girls, because we are primarily girls in the group) has been ribbing Josh about being British and his lack of an American funny bone (doesn’t think “Superbad,” etc. are funny). Or a British funny bone at that (doesn’t like one of Emily’s favorite comedians). We decided that Average Americans and Boring Brits should be our designations. Haha.
Poopy – two new mosquito bites: one on the back of my left leg by my butt cheek – super itchy; and the second bite is on the top of my right thigh, up at the top – it was itchy earlier, but not quite as itchy as the other one. Man, I’m so succulent to these vicious mosquitoes.
So tired. Hopefully I can wake up in time to do a morning walk and then go help my campers! I need to buy odor neutralizer stuff for the icky smoke smell on my pants and other clothes. Eesh. Also need to bum a ride to get some toothpaste, detergent, and some other “Bear Necessities” (which I started singing this morning in the cabin, much to the amusement of the campers and Melissa).
Oh, super frustrating: the health form, that I took so much trouble filling out and even took it to Oak Ridge Pediatrics (I have GOT to get an actual adult doctor!) to get the immunization records written out, has gone missing, and so I had to fill it out anew, leaving blank, of course, the immunization record things. Poop on them. AND – even worse – they made us bring all of our topical creams for itching, pills like ibuprofen, and the like to the health clinic so that they could lock it up. So frustrating! I just want to get up in the morning, pop in my allergy pill, and be off – but nooooooo – I have to go all the way to the HC to get it. (It’s really not that far or difficult or inconvenient, I just enjoy the whining.)
Farewell for now. I’m sure I’ll add more later!
~ Mei
