Gearing up for Jr. 3

It's hard to believe we've finished two weeks of camp already! This last week we had three campers go home sick. One threw up in his bunk at about 10:45pm, which wasn't fun; we evacuated the rest of the cabin to the one empty cabin and went to work with bleach spray, gloves, and paper towel. Pomello, one of our senior counselors got sick on Wednesday night and went home to rest for Thursday; fortunately, we have enough junior staff that one of the more responsible ones was able to take care of her cabin while she was away. 

At the beginning of the week we had a very homesick camper who just did not want to be here. His mom kept insisting that he just needed to give it a try and get involved, but he wasn't willing to involve himself. He just kept asking to call his mom; we tried sending him home just on Monday night, but when he came back on Tuesday, it was evident that he still really didn't want to be here so we sent him home again later that day. 

One night a counselor knocked on my door at around 3am to tell me that his camper just couldn't get to sleep and he didn't know what else to do with him. The camper was frustrated at still being awake, too, since he'd been trying to sleep for at least 4 hours. My only suggestion was to do a bedtime 'reset' which is what I do when I can't sleep: get a drink, go to the bathroom, read my Bible for 10 minutes, and then try to go to sleep again. The counselor left and told me the next morning that it had worked great! 

I enjoyed hanging out with campers during free time a lot this week. I got to go swimming with campers one day and just hung at at the gym or the craft shack other days. It's also fun to sit and talk with them while they eat their canteen.

Since the campers are getting older, 9-11 years old last week, they are coming to me with fewer minor injuries like 'sprained' ankles and fingers and bruises so my week was a little quieter. Next week the campers will be 11-13 years old, which was my favorite age group when I had my own cabin; at this age they are understand enough to start asking some serious questions but they still manage to avoid most of the drama of older campers since it is still a 'kids' camp rather than a 'teen' camp. 

We had our traditional senior staff girls' night out / guys' night out last night, and it was so much fun! The girls went to a cute coffee shop and bookstore in Fort Langley called Wendell's. We walked down the main street of Fort Langley, where they are setting up to film a Christmas movie called "Trading Christmas" and sang Christmas carols. Then we went to Radolfo's house and watched a chick flick. Today we went to Mt. Calvary Lutheran church and now we're chilling until 3:00pm when the junior staff arrive. Since we were out fairly late last night, I think I'll probably take a nap!

Bye for now!

~Quark