The day after my last post was our first beach day. The weather was mizzy when we woke up, but we optimistically packed our bags for the beach and piled into four large American style school buses and off we went! Had a right giggle to myself when they sang thank you to the bus driver upon arrival at the beach :) of course, being in America, every child must have at least one life guard and someone over 21 watching them at all times in the water, so all the poor life guards had to climb into the freezing water to form a barrier for the campers to swim in. I did not envy them! The beach is not particularly exciting... We sit on rocks and the sand is dark grey. Weird, really.
Next came my first (and fairly unexciting) Fourth of July experience. Obviously being in this environment we are limited to candy (which is usually a banned substance here!) and pretty colourful balloons instead of the more grown up experience of excessive amounts of booze and pretty sparkly fireworks. Boo :( but we had fun. We had a Shrek themed day, played loads of games, fed the kids far too much sugar and then struggled to get them to fall asleep. Surprise surprise :) we had campfire that evening and saw a few fireworks over the trees.
After that it got blisteringly hot! Melting kind of hot. We had four falls the next morning... A day for the books :) I spent a good amount of time and energy that afternoon up to my elbows in bubbles washing Gandalf (the grey) until he was spotlessly shining clean, released him into the pasture to graze and watched him immediately and gleefully (I know he was laughing at me!) roll in the first gloopy patch of mud he could find. Hmph. I found out that in America, when we hear thunder (take note, lightning is not mentioned here) we run for cover and walk under the trees for safety. I thought this was funny until they held me captive in the infirmary for over an hour until they deemed it safe for me to be outside again because of one dim roll of thunder in the hills. I tried to inform them that I had no fears because African thunder comes with loud noises and lots of flashing light and thus is far scarier but to no avail. I was stuck.
The next event worth mentioning was the tent overnight. Pitched (unintentional pun!) to us as: Two tents get chosen to go on an adventure together through the woods to a random out of the way tent; light a fire; have s'mores; get to know each other and go to bed late. Basically a massive slumber party. Excited children pack their overnight bags. Laura envisions staying up late next to a dying fire while enjoying the night and maybe lying gazing at stars. Reality: walk further down the hill from the bathroom to tent that has no beds - first surprise, we sleep on the floor! - I am somewhat less than thrilled by this concept when it dawns on me that I will be doing this without the comfort of the sleeping pads that every person except me has brought with them; light a fire, quickly make s'mores then put out the fire all within the space of twenty minutes; send children off into the bush with the very real possibility of them inadvertently squatting over poison ivy, before all climbing into our sleeping bags and not sleeping all night because one of the children screams in her sleep and another kicks my head while stumbling her way out of the tent in the dark.
The next two nights we had barn overnights. These were great fun! We split all the campers who ride into two groups and invited them to come to the barn for a night of games and fun before all sleeping on the floor in the barn. We played tug o' war, wheelbarrow races, apple bobbing and made a massive bran tub dip in Gandalf's stall. It was grand. Had a chance to go out for a counsellor ride on Friday and we got to race around like mad things in the field jumping logs and tyres. Great fun! Sunday brought in another awkward flag raising experience. I took my girls down to the lake for our last Sunday afternoon picnic together. Lovely sunset :) can't believe first session is almost over! I sang The Scientist at Logs with two of the counsellors. Really fun :) spent my day off on Tuesday in Rockland with some of the counsellors. We just wandered around and enjoyed the sleepy little seaside town. I pranked my kids back by sneaking into the tent and moving all their beds around and then pretending I knew nothing about it the next day. They were well and truly vexed :) I only admitted it was me on the last day of first session! They were thrilled.
The full season campers put on a play called Bye Bye Birdie which was really sweet and pretty hilarious. A lot of talented kids here! Packing was a terribly stressful affair, with four trunks to do in one day and four kids who had managed to spread their goods almost over the entire camp property. But we succeeded! Parents weekend and beginning of session two will follow in my next post.
Stay tuned and stay classy c",)
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