Achillies Last Stand

Only two weeks left of summer, sad face. However, after that I have two and a half weeks of travel, happy face. After another busy week I’m on time off again.

The all comments for this session was a Robin Hood themed shindig. A number of fires were lit out in the forest and we did activities such as bread and hat making. I was involved as a jester of sorts, juggling and doing magic with the kid. It was a lot of fun to be interacting with the younger ones who really got into it.

The biggest thing worth mentioning is A.L.A. which stands for Another Lakeside Attraction. This event is a huge part of session 3. Basically it’s a big concert between both the boys and girls camps. It was absolutely amazing. Highlights included a kid who could beat box so fantastically (the girls were right on him as soon as he finished), a ska rendition of Radiohead’s Creep and a chilled out cover of Iris by The Goo-goo dolls. My drama group did performances too.  The juniors sung one of our warm up songs and got the audience to do it as a round with them and the seniors did a game where they define made up words. Both went pretty well. I also played in the overly long staff song. Our camp director rapped the first verse of Eminem’s Lose Yourself followed by Written In The Stars,  accapella versions of Gold Digger, Stand By Me and In The Still Of The Night with the band joining in again for The Boys Are Back In Town. It turned out pretty well for something we never practiced as a whole group.

Overall it was a really nice evening. Because the weather was good this year it was held outside on the tennis courts. We had a cookout (barbecue) and just relaxed and enjoyed the music. One of the guys organised a flash mob. After we ate ‘badger’ was announced over the p.
a. system and five minutes later the boys erupted into choreographed dance. I’m amazed that it managed to stay a secret. I’m also pretty sure we’ll reuse it to awe the kids this session.

My favourite story from the past week was while we were waiting for the second half of our cabin at A.L.A. and is a perfect example of one of those moments that can only happen on camp. One of the boys was tossing around an empty water bottle. On one particularly bad throw it went off to the side and hit one of the other boys in the head. The boy got such a shock he jumped in the air and his pants fell down.

The other big thing from the last week is that I was asked to be acting unit leader while my unit leader was on his 48 hour time off. It was kind of an honour to be asked to keep the ship running but it was also quite hard. Although I have the experience back home, here as I was only acting there was lots of stuff that I knew what to do but couldn’t do. On the first morning it was decided that one of the kids in my unit needed to be sent home,  sadface.

I’m now finishing this off on the second night of the last session. 10 more days and camp is over. Once again I’m back in the youngest unit, the same cabin as session one. I’ve sat through two campfires. Closing last session where the girls camp actually turned out to be Mordor and opening hosted by two stranded hunters. So far my cabin has been pretty awesome. They’re young enough to still be enthusiastic without an attitude. One of the kids has started calling my co ‘goose’ purely because he wants to be known as ‘maverick’.

So I’ll probably only have time for one more post during camp, for now I’m going back to Harry Potter to entertain myself as I’m on OD.

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