First Week of Camp

Well, I survived. This week has been a BLAST. The kids were so cute. there are 30 of them, and unfortunately, none of you will see them until I get back since I can't put them on here. But in short, we had girl drama, an ADD child, some great guys, the cutest little five year old girl on the face of the planet, some really adorable Japanese kids and all in all a great week. First I want to introduce to the space that we work in. This week was ocean week, so here is a little tour of Daly hall.


















Oh, by the way, I must have you know that I am one of hte most artistic people in day camp when it comes to poster making. Now all of my good friends will know that I have absolutely no artistic skill whatsoever, and yet, I am totally creative and useful in this capacity. I have drawn so many posters and I really am truly proud of myself. Thanks for letting me brag for just one minute.

So anyways, thats where I work. We did a bunch of different activities this week. We played a lot of games and sang a lot of songs. boy do i love camp songs, i could just do them alllll day. that's my favorite part of the day. The people I work with are super cool. We all have different styles and different ideas and so it all works out in the end. The thing I love best about our day camp staff is that none of us are too controlling and that we all pretty much just go with the flow. a lot of camp is being able to just take life as it comes and change games when the kids get bored and always always have a back-up plan.

We go swimming for an hour everyday which is fun becasue i get to just float around and play with the kids and get a tan (a giant plus). The campers always get so excited when they find out that they are going in the water. Not one of them has ever complained about going to the pool.

It is really amazing the reputation that Camp Adventure has here. Usually, to get in the gate of the compound we work on, you need an ID out. However, when the guards see us coming they open up the gate with big smiles on their faces and shoo us onto the compound. Everyone is always so nice to us, and even people in our hotel tell us about how great they think Camp Adventure is. I guess I never realized how truly important it is that we keep that good name and make sure that we don't make a fool of ourselves while we are here. I have to say that doing Camp Adventure is probably one of the smartest things that I have ever done. What an opportunity to be able to see the world but also work with kids who don't lead the lives of "normal" kids. It is an interesting lifestyle but it totally works for all of these families.

One of the big high lights of this week was Wednesday when we went on our first fieldtrip to Disney Sea, which is next to the disneyland here. It has a lot of little mermaid stuff and the kids got a picture with Captain Jack Sparrow. It was super cool, but it would have been cooler if it was POURING outside. Literally pouring. We were all so wet by the end. One kid said that she was "mushy" and that pretty much describes how I felt after the whole thing. It was fun, but kind of stressful because when you are responsible for 15 other children who aren't yours, there is that extra weight of "I need to keep these kids safe AND get them home in one piece." But apart from feeling like a wet dog and anxious about kids it was really fun day.

Today we had a BBQ and the kids loved it. It was really hard at the end of te day to say good-bye to them knowing that some of them weren't going to come back. We actually have quite a few who are moving to different places in the next week. its amazing the connection I have to some of them even after five days. I wish that I could just bring some of them home with me. I have received so much artwork in the past week and I have had them sign it all and put the date on it.

My favorite part of the day is during closing when the kids get to share their favorite part of the day and then get to pick a song to sing at closing. When I first learned "World's greatest" and "Lean on me" I never thought I would survive all the sign langague that went along with them, but now I am a seasoned pro. I just love looking up an seeing all the kids staring at me signing and blinding copying whatever I am doing.


On a side note, I am super excited that Ashlee's wedding is now this september instead of next september. I know that her and Chad are going to be really happy together and I can't wait. At first I was all thrown off, but now I am beginning to juggle work and it is really sinking in and I am super duper excited about it. love you all!!!