Last Break & Session 6

Break
Our last break before the final session of the summer was SO much fun! Definitely one of the best breaks, if not the best. On the first day around 20 of us went for lunch at On the Border, a mexican restaurant, which was really nice to relax and hang out and eat food other than camp food! We then all went to the mall afterwards to find outfits for Banquet! This started off being really fun and we kind of split off into small groups, so Sam, Maddie and I went around together looking for dresses, shoes, jewellery etc. It ended up getting a little stressful though, especially when people couldn't decide what to wear...(Dom shopping in Macy's drove everyone to breaking point, haha). A group of us then went for dinner afterwards and decided then to go back to camp, get changed and go for icecream at Dairy Queen, then after that we went to a beach further up the lake from camp and hung out there sitting on the dock and all talking. It is definitely one of my favorite moments of the summer, sitting on the dock with my close friends just discussing loads of stuff and with stars in the sky and the lake so peaceful it was such a good atmosphere! :-)

Everyone on the pontoon boat.

Kelsey, Sam, Me & Katie on the boat.

The next day of break some of us went for lunch at Applebee's and then came back and spent the whole afternoon on the pontoon boat on Sebago Lake. This was an AMAZING afternoon! SO much fun! We sailed out quite a bit and stopped the boat and all lept off it into the water and swam about and jumped off more which was wicked fun. We then sailed to Frye Island which was quite far away from camp on the other side of the lake (Sebago Lake is huge) and by the time we got there we realised that we had hardly any gas left and wouldn't be able to make it back to camp unless we got some more! Frye Island didn't have a gas station, so we got some icecream there and tried not to panic, and thankfully some other people very kindly offered to show us where the nearest boat gas station was so we followed them across the lake and got more gas just in time before we totally ran out! This meant we could now all relax so we went back out into the middle of the lake and stopped and jumped off the boat more and played music and danced etc, it was just sooo much fun :-) On the way back me, Maddie and Kelsey sat on the very front of the boat and let our feet get carried along by the water and just laughed and sang along to the music. Great memories from that day!

Jumping off the boat!

Me, Maddie & Kelsey.

Session 6

Session 6 was the last session of the summer, and it was definitely one of the best, everyone made the most of it and gave it their all. Deejay and I had 10 campers that week, which was double what we had the week before so things seemed a bit more normal again. One of the evening programs was called Collaboration, which was just for the girl campers. All the girl counselors had to pair up with their co-counselor and perform something on stage for the campers to watch. Deejay and I did an alternative Taylor Swift performance...I pretended to be Taylor Swift singing her song Love Story whilst Deejay was pretending to be a DJ behind me, then the music cut and I yelled out "Hey, DJ turn it up!" and then it changed song into Thug Story, Taylor Swift's gangster parody of her own song Love Story and we rapped along and acted like rappers. It was fun, all the other performances were really entertaining and funny too. Mel and Kirsten got all the other counselors up on stage and squirted us all with water guns, haha. 

Team Ireland's staff members.

Session 6 was a little different from the other sessions because we had Olympics. Basically for a day and a half we ran fake Olympic Games. The counselors and kids were all assigned to countries (I was the Captain of the Irish team) and during the opening ceremony which was one of the evening programs, each country had to put face paint on and create and perform a chant after the passing of the torch procession. I taught my team the Ireland rugby chant (Ireland, Ireland together standing tall...etc) and we added a few other chants to the end of it. The kids were so cute singing it all decked out in green, white and orange with shamrocks and Irish flags on their faces! 

Me doing the high jump, haha!

The next day was Olympic Games day, this was undoubtedly the most exhausting day ever!! It was a lot of fun but it felt more like bootcamp than simple games for the counselors. It was so hot also that day, it made it hard to keep going. The Games were fun though. We went around in our countries and did activities like javelin, discus, shot put, high jump, triple jump, long jump, hurdles, sprinting and we built a lean-two (basically a tee-pee). The counselors had to participate in everything as well as the kids, which was tiring but hilarious. Thank goodness we had Freddie on team Ireland as he is really athletic and set a lot of records for the events!

Me, Fred, Mel & Abby

That day we ate meals with our countries etc, and in the afternoon we took part in tug-of-war, swimming relay races, dodgeball, freeze dance, soccer and capture the flag against the other countries. It was non-stop!! It was fun, but quite stressful as team Ireland seemed to have most of the youngest campers who needed more instruction and control than the older ones. By the time it was our turn to do the water race we were all just ready to jump right off the dock into the water to cool off and try and relax for a little bit! After dinner that night we had to come up with a skit for our whole team to perform, so we made one up about how our kids wouldn't listen all day and ran off on us and when they returned and we asked where they were they said they had followed a rainbow and found a pot of gold so we wouldn't need to win the Olympics anymore, haha. In the end Canada won, and Ireland came 5th out of 8 countries which wasn't too bad seeing as Freddie was really our only team member really into athletics! 

YO- G! Younger Girls Unit.

We had a Younger Girls Unit night out in session 6 where we just went to Wal-Mart and stocked up on snacks and went to the dock by TJ's where some of us had gone during our last break to hang out which was nice just to get off camp for a bit and hang out as a unit one last time before the end of camp. 

  

Jesus Theater during session 6 was incredible! So many of my campers were really affected by it and wanted to talk and share with me issues that were going on in their lives. It was amazing to see how many of them wanted to pray and talk about God not just with me and Deejay but among themselves. I heard so many interesting, encouraging and inspiring stories from these little 9 & 10 year old girls and it was a really special night. Jesus Theater was a big part of camp life each week and it was really successful, enjoyable and rewarding for everyone. Hannah, who was in charge of it, deserves so much credit for doing such a good job! 

Sebago Awards on the last night of the session was so much fun!! The week before, kind of embarrassingly, me, Sean, Dom and Meaghan were pulled up on stage by the unit leaders and made to dance to S Club 7, which was really funny, but this time at the end of the awards the whole camp had a dance party which was a brilliant way to end the last night! Everyone went crazy dancing to dance music, Bon Jovi and Don't Stop Believing by Journey. Marshall, who was one of Dom's campers that week and has autism, wanted to dance with me as I had helped him out making something in Arts & Crafts earlier in the week, and he pulled me up on stage with Maddie to dance which was fun. He took it a little far though by then telling everyone in the infirmary during Night Meds that I was his girlfriend!! Haha, this only got worse on closing day when his mom came to pick him up and he pointed me out and said "there's my girlfriend!". Thankfully she was not annoyed and saw the funny side! 

After closing day, camp clean up began and lasted for two days. We had to completely clean our cabins and areas from top to bottom until they were spotless which we made fun by blasting music etc so it really wasn't bad at all. One of the nights of camp clean up we had Vespers which is something we had once every week, just a time of sharing what had happened during the week and of music and prayer, and then we were allowed to go off camp for a bit so some of us went to Applebee's (our second home it would seem) where Jared decided to order 3 desserts, hahaha, what a bad idea! The next night after camp clean up a huge screen was set up in the field and everyone brought couches and mattresses out to sit on and we watched two movies, which was really nice. 

Abby, Me, Jaime, Sam & Katie all ready for Banquet.

Our Banquet Table - Abby, Jared, Jaime, Lyle, Me, Dom, Kelsey & Sean.

Me & Kelsey with our awards.

The following day was Banquet Day! Camp clean up was all done so we had the whole day off, so me, Sam, Jaime and Abby left early and went to the mall and got pedicures and shopped for last minute jewellery and shoes and had a really nice girls lunch out. We then came back to camp and had from about 1pm until 6pm to get ready! This was a lot of fun, we had a shaving party on the porch of cabin 26 and sat on the porch for ages just talking and took our time getting ready, doing our hair, make up etc so it was all really relaxed and fun. All the girl counselors got ready in 26 and at 6pm the boys walked over across the field to meet us, and get pictures etc. We then all walked over to the pavilion where dinner tables had been set up and there were caterers and a huge buffet of really good food! Everyone chatted and took photos and had a great time at the dinner. There were camp Superlative awards, which everyone had voted for, for things like Best Tan, Camp Comedian, Friendliest, Honor Staff etc. I won Best Hair which was really nice as I didn't expect to win anything at all! Also on show at Banquet was the big Camp Sebago Staff 2011 board which is a huge board with a painting of a sunset at camp with everyone's names on it, which is really nice. We also watched a powerpoint slideshow of photos taken throughout the summer which was really nice and it was funny looking back on some of the hilarious moments that had happened.

Wazzo getting the party started.

Me & Maddie whipping our hair back and forth.

After the meal, the tables were cleared away and everyone started dancing. All summer, the Younger Men (Younger Boys) Unit counselors had always introduced themselves on skit night by saying "I'm Sean/Lyle/Jared etc... and I like to party". Well, Camp Sebago staff likes to party. It was one of the most fun nights of the summer dancing crazily with everyone! Maddie and I got up on stage and whipped our hair back and forth like crazy to Willow Smith's song "I whip my hair" and Wazzo got everyone pumped up by having a dance off, and Sean & Fred performed their Justin Bieber routine one more time, it was just such a great way to spend the final night at camp :-).

Sunrise.

We only got a couple of hours sleep before me, Wazzo, Meaghan, Alicia and Magnes got up to do watch the sunrise down at the waterfront. I had to force myself to get out of bed to go and am so glad that I did because it was so beautiful. The sky was purple, pink, orange and red and the water was so still. We wandered along the shore and sat on docks and rocks watching it, and it was definitely the perfect way to end our time at camp for the summer, just admiring the beauty of where we had been all summer. I have seen pretty sunsets in Florida and at home in Ireland before but this was undoubtedly the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen :-).

Meaghan, Me, Alicia & Magnes on the dock watching the sunrise.

The staff board.

It was one of the hardest things ever to say goodbye to everyone the morning after Banquet. I still can't believe camp is over, the time flew by but at the same time it felt like I had been there forever. I really did not want to leave! I don't think anyone did! After camp ended me, Kelsey, Sean & Dom went on vacation to Washington DC and then to NYC for a few days before going home and had a lot of fun which I will detail about in the next entry! 

Long Break & Session 5

I realise I have not blogged in a month...when I returned to camp after long break I decided that I would rather not spend my free time writing and instead just hang out with everyone as much as possible as the summer was quickly coming to an end. But anyway, I shall update it now as usual.

Long Break
Once session 4 had ended we got 4 days off so for long break I went down to New York to visit Tylar my friend from St. Andrews. It was a really good trip, I did however have some travel issues. I stupidly decided to take the 8hour long Greyhound bus instead of fly (why oh why??) and on the way there once we crossed over the state line into NY the bus got pulled over and a cop got on board and said "Everyone, I would appreciate your co-operation at this time as we are searching for someone". I was freaking out inside! Thankfully after waiting for 20 minutes the bus was allowed to continue on and nothing was wrong. 

Me at Times Square

It was really exciting to see Tylar outside of school, and we had so much fun! The first full day we went into NY from New Jersey where she lives, and went to Macy's, visited Times Square, went shopping on 5th Avenue, went to the Rockefeller Center, and we got food from a street vendor (not great) and hung out in Central Park for a bit. In the afternoon we went on a boat tour which took us past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty which was really cool. We ended up going back to NJ for the evening to eat and go to the mall there where everything was tax free, woo! Tylar also took me to a place called Eagle Rock in NJ which was really nice; it is a big observatory point up on a hill which looks out onto the skyline of NYC and has a big memorial for 9/11 with all the names of everyone who was lost during the attack. It was one of my favorite things which we did. 

Me & the Statue of Liberty

The second day we went to Ground Zero and saw the new World Trade Center being built and visited the memorial preview store which had documentaries etc showing on large screens. We also visited the church beside Ground Zero which offered loads of support in the aftermath of the attacks and it was really interesting to walk around and look at the displays it had on show. We walked along Wall Street and then went back uptown to the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art). I loved the Met, it had some really nice exhibitions in it (I was disappointed however that there was a big Alexander McQueen exhibition on and the waiting time in line for it was over 2 hours so I couldn't see it). We met up with Andrew, another friend from St Andrews, at the Met and he took us to see the musical Jersey Boys on Broadway. It was really good and so funny! I love musical theater so really enjoyed it. We then went for dinner after it at a very nice Italian restaurant in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, which was very relaxing and pleasant. Later that night, Tylar and I went up the Empire State Building, which although it was cool being up at the top, was not particularly enjoyable as we were so tired by this point and we had to wait in line for 90mins to even get up to the top, which was packed full of people, and then we had to queue to even get out of the building. Not really the best time to do it, even though the city looked really nice at night. As it took so long at the Empire State Building we had to rush like crazy and had an epic run through Port Authority to catch the bus in time, which was hilarious upon reflection!
The next day I then had to travel back up to Maine, and everything went really well until we got to Boston for a layover. When it was time to leave Boston the bus had a new driver who had never driven the route before, thus had no idea how to get out of Boston and onto the highway. Passengers started yelling out directions at him, which wasn't helping, and as we were driving through Boston suddenly we crashed into the side of a truck and the bus' wing mirror fell off...Passengers started screaming and the driver took forever to find his way back to the station. Eventually after waiting around at the station, we got a new bus and a new driver and made it back to Portland, ME just fine. Sam picked me up from the station and we went and got massages with Alicia - I definitely needed one by then!!!

Me & Tylar on the steps of the Met.

Session 5
Session 5 was a little strange as after the previous session in which I had 14 campers in my cabin which was crazy, I now had 5 campers! There were pros and cons to this - it was less stressful and we could keep count of them easily and get them organised easily, but then again it was a little difficult trying to play games etc when there were so few of them. 

Abby, Me & Maddie dressed up for Superhero Night.

Me & Sean dressed up as catwoman and catman.

We had some really fun evening programs that session. One evening we had Superhero night so everyone on camp dressed up as superheroes and the program staff dressed up as super villains. Early in the day at lunchtime Captain Brett came into the dining hall and announced really seriously and really angrily that a canteen key had gone missing so there was now only one and that whoever had it must return it (I did not realise this was a joke...oops). Evening program started in Sebago Hall, and Fred was dressed up as the Joker and he came up on stage and stole the last remaining canteen key... This launched evening program. All the kids and counselors then had to take part in games of kickball, poisonball, capture the flag and an obstacle course in order to defeat the supervillains and win parts of a puzzle that when put together would lead us to where to get the key back. Once we'd finished the activities we went up to the camp fire site and waited silently until the Joker appeared, then some of the staff "fought" against him and won the key back. It was a really fun evening, definitely one of my favorites!! 

T-Swizzle, Thunder, Lightening & DJ turn it up.

Another really fun evening program was gangster Clue. We played Clue earlier in the summer but this time gave it a gangster theme, which was really fun to get dressed up for. My cabin was paired up with 6B again to go around camp and figure out who murdered "Mr. Sebago", and Brent and Tyler (6B's counselors) were hilarious, and get cracking jokes the whole time making everyone laugh. They called themselves Thunder & Lightening (because together they create a storm...) and gave me the gangster name T-Swizzle (after Taylor Swift) and Deejay got called "DJ turn it up". This time when we went around camp to get the clues our cabins were made to rap the week's memory verse, sing Thunderation etc. It was a lot of fun, and ended again with the murderer being thrown in the lake.

Lorissa (Miss Scarlett) gets thrown in the lake!

 For clubs that week, me, Sean & Dom took British Club as I'm from Northern Ireland, Sean is Scottish and Dom is English. It was quite good; the first day we did a scavenger hunt around camp to find dodgeballs in teams and every team was a different country and we played a few more games with them after that. The next day Sean organised Highland Games for them to compete in in their countries. The final activity in the Highland Games was human ring toss, where the kids had to throw hoops and try and get them on me, Sean & Dom... My favorite British Club activity however was my own idea haha (well, with a little help from Dom). We took the kids to the playground and Dom and I pretended to be guards and tied Sean (a.k.a Prince William) up and entrapped him in the playground castle. This meant the aim of the game was to set Prince William free so that he could marry Kate Middleton (Kelsey). To do so, firstly we had the kids do a number of challenges like walk with a book on their head, introduce themselves in a British accent etc. The last challenge was to go find Kelsey (a.k.a Kate) who had a map which showed where the key to a treasure chest was hidden. When they brought Kelsey back then they had to complete an obstacle course in order to get the map from her, which led them to where the key to the chest was hidden. They then found the chest and in it were loads of dodgeballs and a crown. They had to throw the dodgeballs at me & Dom to defeat the guards and then climb up into the castle, untie Sean and give him his crown. Then we performed a fake royal wedding so it all ended happily ever after and Wills and Kate got reunited and married, haha! It was actually very fun and successful even though Dom & Sean were a bit dubious at first.


Another entertaining thing from that week was Dom asking me to banquet. Banquet is at the very end of camp and it's a big dinner party with dancing after it and most people arrange to go with someone to it. After some over the top proposals (Buckley made Sam a big powerpoint presentation for example) Dom decided to have me get up at 5am and meet him at the gazebo. From there we went to boating and there was string the whole way down the stairs and along the boating dock which I had to follow and pull on when I got to the end of the dock. Out of the water, attached to the string, came a message in a bottle which basically said go to the pavilion. So we went to the pavilion and on the floor there were loads of chalk drawings and a message saying Now go to the waterfront. So we went to the waterfront and as I was walking down the ramp I saw in pebbles on the ground the word "Banquet?". It was highly entertaining and really nice! We hung out at the waterfront for a bit and fed some ducks who appeared on the shore. I definitely had the most extravagant banquet proposal out of everyone on camp, haha!

Pirates attack!

Lord's Day that week was also really fun as at lunchtime some of the program staff came in dressed as pirates and seized the unit leaders hostage. Then when everyone went down to the waterfront for all camp swim that afternoon the pirates came over on the pontoon boat with the unit leaders and when they docked they threatened to push the unit leaders into the water as their treasure had been stolen by them. Captain Brett stepped up and sacrificed himself in order for the unit leaders to go free so he was pushed in. It was really funny, and made all camp swim more fun! 


Jesus Theater that night was also really good as I got to talk to one girl after it called Alexis, who was also in British Club that week, who was very affected by it as she had dealt with a lot - her family had just got out of a homeless shelter, her grandfather had passed away and her grandmother was in hospital. And Alexis is only 10 years old. I talked to her for a little bit and she was so thankful to have someone just listen to her. It is definitely one of my favorite camper moments.


That night the Younger Girls Unit camped out, which was fun. I set my s'more on fire and couldn't get it to blow out...oops, me & Maddie were on Angel Watch that night and had to tell the 7 year olds off multiple times for talking, and Abby and Sam convinced me to sleep outside on the ground by the fire with them instead of in the tent but we got rained on in the middle of the night and had to move into the tent in the end!


All in all, it was an eventful session and the break which followed it was definitely one of the best breaks of the summer! :-)