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! :-)