Session 3 ended up being even tougher by the end of the week because there was a heatwave which made it pretty unbearable to do anything. As it was music camp that week, on the last night there was a concert featuring performances from all th different classes etc, which was put on outside at the pavilion. I have never been so uncomfortable sitting for 2 and a half hours in 96f heat, crammed into rows of chairs with campers all around me complaining the whole time about how hot it was. I have surprised myself this summer by being a lot more patient than I thought I was. A lot of the campers went home that night because their parents came to watch so there were only 3 girl left in my cabin that night so DJ and I let them set up a slumber party on the floor with their mattresses etc instead of being in bunk beds. The next day we only got a 9 hour break instead of our usual day and a half break so because it was so hot we went to the mall to shop and then to see Harry Potter where there was air conditioning! In the Maine Mall there is a train ride that does laps of the mall, which is really for little kids, but we all went on it and called it the Hogwarts express to get us in the mood for the film. Some of the group put on lightening bolt fake tattoos on their heads that Captain Jessica had given us from the canteen...they looked so overly keen for the film!
Session 4 started the next day, and there were over 200 kids here this past week which was cray and a big challenge for everyone. I had 14 girls in my cabin this week which was a little overwhelming at first but I think me and DJ handled it pretty well. 14 girls made everything a lot more stressful, as everything took longer than usual, it was hard to keep track of them all. That reminds me actually of session 3 when there was a code 5 alert one day which is the signal for a missing camper. When the alert was announced everyone ran to the flagpole and counted their kids and started to break up into search parties only to discover that there wasn't a missing camper at all, they had just gone to the wrong music class or something. It was pretty scary at the time though, hopefully it won't happen again! But the girls I had this week were a handful. When they were good they were really cute but they fought a lot and complained a lot and there were several that had really bad home sickness but I think we overcame all these things pretty well. I had to lay down the law several times though to the point that I had them trained into saying "this is a no fighting or complaining zone". I also had to give them a talk about cabin clean up as the cabin was disgusting. Just so many more girls than normal pushed the cabin over it's limits. I had to do some major clean up of it this morning when they all left.
There were some interesting evening programs this week. For skit night, the younger girls unit did a super hero skit where we tried to solve the problem of not having enough ice for sno cones on Lord's Day (we got the inspiration for this from Magnes who was genuinely concerned about not having enough ice and brought it up at the staff meeting. Needless to say everyone just laughed at him). So one by one the younger girls counselors went up as different superheros to try and solve the problem. Maddie went up as a broken wizard as she has a broken elbow so we used this as an excuse to get Magnes up on stage to be her helper. I then came on as ice woman and solved the problem by holding up two pitchers of ice and pouring them all over Mag. Haha.
One evening program we had was called crazy corners which was a huge game that the whole camp was involved in. Everyone dressed up in crazy colored stuff and the staff were given labels to wear with points on them. So counselors were worth 10points, leadership staff were 15points etc. All the staff had to stand in the middle of the field and run when the campers were let loose so that they wouldn't tag us. If they tagged us they took us back to their unit bases. Maddie and I paired up as a duo and made it funny for them by speaking in funny accents and clinging to the flagpole/soccer net so they wouldn't take us. The next night counselors got a night off! We were all so excited and just spent the time at Applebees having dinner (camp food is getting worse by the day). It was so funny though as we felt like parents leaving our kids at school or a crèche or something. We were told we had to be back at 8:30pm to pick our kids up at Sebago Hall so as we pull up at camp we check the time and it's 8:29pm so we start sprinting to sign in and then I start running to Sebago Hall when I hear DJ screaming across the field "Sarah!!! They're in the Rec hall!!!" so we bolt across the field and just make it in time. Had we not made it we would have been given early curfew which would have sucked!
Another evening program this week was a staff auction night where each cabin had 500points they could use to bid on staff members who would perform tasks for them. My girls decided they wanted to bid on Steffan and Roger who said they would do anything they wanted so we blew 450 of our points winning them. This then caused major stress because we had hardly any points left. Thankfully we won bonus points for being the best at saying the memory verse and dancing the hoedown throwdown, but we still didn't have enough to win anything else so loads of them started fighting and crying and it kind of ruined the fun. Personally I wanted them to just win the housekeeping team who would do cabin clean up for them but that idea was shot down! So we won Roger and Steffan so last night we cut Roger's hair off, put makeup on them and made them clean the cabin. The girls enjoyed it!
On Lord's Day night it was the younger girls turn to camp out which was fine, just uncomfortable sleeping on the wooden platform. I set my marshmallow on fire making a s'more which provided a bit of entertainment.
For clubs this week, me Mel and Leann took Finding Nemo club which was actually a huge success to the dismay of our nemesis club, water world. We made Nemo fish with the kids and then did a scavenger hunt around camp to find them, one day we went down to the lake and did water games and the last day we got water guns and sneaked up on all the other clubs and squirted them. It was pretty fun!
Last night we had Sebago Awards where honor camper awards are handed out in between songs etc. I was asked to come up on stage to do the Sebago song with 5 others so we start doing the song when people came along and soaked us with water! Justin's cabin had won some junior staff in the auction who promised to take out their "enemies" with water guns so they had planned the whole thing and purposefully chosen all of us on stage! They chose me because all week long they believed that I was Justin's sister. Can't believe they fell for that.
Now I am off until Monday night on long break so I'm currently on a bus going to see Tylar in New York for the weekend. I'm really excited, we're going to do lots of tourist stuff,see a broadway show etc. Can't wait!
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