Let the adventures begin!!!

I arrived in Connecticut at 5:30 on Monday evening and Jess fetched me at Hartford station. We headed off to meet her fiancé, Jimmy, at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. The food was amazing but the dessert was mind blowing: white chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake. They had three pages of menu dedicated solely to cheesecake (Mom, you would die!). After dinner we headed back to Jess and Jimmy's gorgeous new little apartment in Meriden and watched a movie.

This morning Jess and I headed to Hamden to hike up the Sleeping Giant (previously mentioned in "the inside scoop"). It was a lovely day and a beautiful trail. We got to the top and decided to FaceTime both our moms. Totally awesome :) when we got down, we headed into Hamden to visit the bank (I used a drive thru ATM!) and almost got hit by an absolute idjot (spelt like that intentionally) on the way out. Jess called her a poephol - I was so proud! :) 

We stopped at a jewelry store and I got myself some Alex and Ani bracelets and one for Jess as an engagement gift. They are huge thing in America right now. A sort of charm bracelet. I love them :) they are made from recycled materials and each charm has a meaning behind it. there are also various charms connected to charities which means a portion of the profits goes to the charities when you buy them. I got five bracelets: a western saddle, a feather, an Aries charm, a medallion that says Live Music and one that says Completely Blessed. I shall be a trendsetter when I get home! I am sure of it :) 

Anyway, when we got back to her apartment I met her new pet - a hedgehog named Omri! He is too cute!!! He curls up in a ball and sticks his spikes out all around him if you out him on his back! I had a good giggle when I met him!

Jess and Jimmy and I went to Sakimura for dinner and had habachi. It was awesome! They cook the food in front of you and put on a whole show, squirting saki and tossing zucchini into the patrons' mouths and spinning their spatulas etc. I caught the zucchini :) lolsies. It is awesome to watch! We took half our food home in a doggy bag, and I found out in America you make your own doggy bag! They bring the box to you and you do the rest! 

All in all a great first day back in civilisation! 

Stay classy beautiful peeps c",)

Summer camp ends

Sadly, not much to report on the end half of camp. As usual, I am so sorry for the long silence, I simply had not a moment to myself! And also, not enough happened to be worthy of a blog until camp ended. A few storms, some performances at logs, a couple days off and my tent won tent inspection two weeks in a row :) other than that not much else happened. The end of camp was interesting though.

I had a few lovely days off in second session. One of which took me on a long 4.2 mile walk down the road for a break. It was lovely! We had a few more falls which were mostly amusing and not at all serious. Poor kiddies were traumatised though :-p they're so funny when they're scared! Lolsies. Camp ended with what I can only describe as a ritual. It sounds terrifying, I know, and it was! Basically a Waldorf wedding ceremony without the rings. 

We all walked in to the camp house in our tent groups (except for myself and three others who were playing the Canon in D by Pachelbel - memories mommy? :-p) and were handed a thick birch twig as we walked in. Once all the ceremonious "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today..." speeches were out of the way (yes, I'm mocking a little but not exaggerating by much!), each tent went up one at a time and our birch twigs were bound together while someone stated that the campers in tent blah blah blah were forever bonded together in camp friendship. The tent counsellor then threw the bonded twigs into a fire. I felt incredibly squirmy and awkward. After that, the campers left the next day and we sorted out all the tents for family camp before the families arrived on Tuesday! 

Family camp was far more relaxed than actual camp. Mostly we did pony ride style lessons. Some kids were so little that we had to quintuple roll the stirrup leathers and their legs didn't even reach the bottom of the saddle! Bless them, they were so cute :) one particularly cute little four year old fella, Emmett, took a shine to me. He was absolutely adorable! He asked his parents to go away so that I could babysit him. Too cute :) he was a real proper little rough 'n tumble tyke. Arrived at camp with a black eye! They just don't make kids like that anymore :) after family camp, we had a very tearful goodbye with the horses :'( for some of us, it was as close as we had ever been to having our own horse and it was pretty hard to let go! We closed up the barn far quicker than any of us thought possible, got fed far too much pizza for dinner on Sunday night and left early on Monday morning for the bus so that we could finally GTFO (Google it :-p) of Maine. I've never felt so happy and free.

I took a bus to Boston with all the riding girls. Had a tearful goodbye at South station as they went off to New York and I headed to Connecticut to meet up again with my beautiful friend Jess. As much as I won't miss camp I will definitely miss those girls! We had an amazing team. 

Stay tuned for adventures in Connecticut! And as always, stay classy c",)

Summer camp continued...

My goodness I have so much catching up to do! Days off are so precious now, I mostly do nothing but Skype home. Sorry for the long silence! 

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",) 

Summer camp starts!!!

Tuesday 25th... Camp has officially started!!! :) we all got dressed in our super sexy camp shorts (that was sarcasm) and tees and waited, melting slightly, in the ridiculously humid and sweltering heat for our campers to arrive. Three of mine came at 10am and the other at 3pm (it was her 10th birthday, bless her) and they are such sweet girls! Thrilled that I have such a nice group :) the one girl is almost straight of the Parent Trap (pranced into the tent like a little madam, announcing that she has an addiction to sunglasses! Lolsies.), the second is very sporty, the third is just overflowing with mischievous energy and the fourth is a quiet, socially awkward girl that asks me very profound questions about Africa... My best so far was (please read in American or it won't be half as funny) "Do they have bathrooms in Africa?" 

Woke up the next morning to very excited whispering and giggles. I myself was less than thrilled when I glanced at my watch to find out it was 5am! Even less thrilled to hear Reveille on the bugle at 7:30 and find out that that's how we'll be waking up every morning. Taps sends us to bed too. It's almost too much American for my ears to handle! (Find them on YouTube if you ain't sure what they is :-p) the first full day of camp was spent with campers wandering around seeing all the different activities and getting acquainted with camp. Felt great to be back in the barn and my filthy jods and boots! :) did a few practical assessments on the campers who boasted their abilities. Hilarity ensued and we tried our hardest not to laugh when we watched the best riders on paper ("I can walk, trot, canter and jump") bouncing like useless sacks of potatoes at a trot. We got assigned our tables today (the campers rotate, counsellors stay put) and I'm paired with a lovely girl. Yay :) 

Activities started on Thursday, and from then on my days are pretty much all the same with the exception of changes in the weather... A typical day at camp is as follows: 

7:30 Reveille blows

8:00 Breakfast

9:30 Activities begin

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Tent time

14:50 Activities resume

17:30 Tent time

18:00 Dinner

19:30 Evening activities

20:45 Taps blows (lights out)

Duties are done in shifts, either off duty during evening activities then on after Taps until 11:30pm, or on duty for evening activities and off after Taps. Sunday has no activities, Wednesday is beach day, which means everybody is shipped off to the beach for the day! Tomorrow is the first one and I'm praying desperately for warmer weather because it's currently a very chilly 14 degrees outside! Everybody is on duty on Sunday evenings. We each get one day off a week and it might never be the same day twice. I will try to post every time I have a day off.

Friday came with some bad news from the horses... Ivy had a massive gash on her near hind leg and Clover came down with colic the next day. Friday night I had my dinner night out and I went into Camden with a bunch of the girls for dinner then came back and watched a movie in Topside. Saturday I got back to my tent after activities to find my bed in the rafters (these are proper permanent tents) and all my left shoes were missing! Little monsters pranked me :) as soon as I had very convincingly feigned my shock and surprise at their cute but so predictable prank, I made them undo all of it and they had been so delighted by my reaction that they didn't even mind or notice :) bless their little hearts they are so cute and innocent. 

Sunday came with another episode of the cult gathering before we sat in some enjoyable meetings while the kids went off to write letters to their family. Later we went and sat down among the pine trees  and talked about settling in. This is a deep and serious hour we spend discussing important matters in a nondenominational manner rather than a church service because of the different backgrounds of the campers. Afterwards we had an afternoon of tent time. I read to my girls most of the afternoon. I'm reading The Magic Faraway Tree to them and I'm glad to report that they love it :) 

So today was my day off, as you have probably guessed ;) I have added a few more pics to the Washington post (taxation without representation) and done these two camp posts. I hope these will sate your appetites until my next day off! Please please please feel free to write me as many letters as you will... If you would like to write me a letter, you can get the address from mom or ask me on Facebook. I will treasure them and reply in kind! :) that's all for now, dearies! 

Stay classy c",)

Summer camp! Pre-camp!

My dear loyal followers... I am so sorry for the long silence! This is my first day off in almost a month and BOY am I tired! No technology allowed in camp (hence bad communication) so I have to leave it all across the road in my locker at Topside, the counsellor house (place of rest where we relax during our dearly needed breaks). As I warned a few of you, my updates will be few now until camp ends. But never fear, I am keeping a detailed daily journal so that you miss out on nothing in between my breaks! :) 

So, where to begin? Pre-camp, I suppose. I arrived on Saturday the 8th of June with the other riding girls. The riding staff consists of three British girls, two Irish girls and myself. Our boss is also a crazy, loud Irish woman. Hilarious and awesome. We definitely have the best department in camp! :) We quickly dumped our bags in the cabin and raced off to meet the geegees! We have twelve horses: Pi - a piebald; Penny - an appaloosa; Kirby - a little black fellow; Nico - a roan mare; Clover - a brown mare; the three greys - Fagan, Mitch and Gandalf (get it?) and the four chestnuts - Jinx, Duchess, Dory and Ivy. Duchess is one of my favourites (saucy little minx, always giving us attitude). They are a bunch of scruffy raggamuffins, but their personalities are shining through and they really are all very sweet. The first few days were spent mucking out stalls, clearing out the tack room, cleaning, sweeping (a lot! Karn is pretty strict about the barn always being clean), and just generally doing a lot of heavy labour. The beds are terrible though, they're basically hammocks in a frame. I sleep on my tummy mostly, so my back was bending like a banana! I managed to find a board eventually but for a few nights I struggled to sleep! It was also very strange to me to hear the ghostly calls of the loons on the lake and wild howls of the coyotes in the woods rather than the crickets and choruses of frogs and jackals that I'm used to when I'm sleeping on a farm! 

Our first day riding (Monday), we started out by testing all the ponies in Western saddles (definitely took some getting used to... I bruised my hand so badly on that damn horn!) then Karn took us on a manic trail ride, jumping any logs we could find, racing through forests and basically just being complete reckless twits :) We ended our ride by taking them swimming in the lake! It was so much fun!!! :) Haven't ridden like that in a long time. The horses had a bit of a surprise though because they hadn't been ridden in ages, so they were just as stiff and sore as us the next day! :) and we were SORE!!! And our boots and chaps were wet for DAYS after that because it rained for three days straight. Summer... Yay. Riding in the rain and knee deep mud was a less than pleasant experience. The horses hated it more than we did, so they were horrendous to ride! The first rainy night, the seven of us went and sat in the library next to a cosy log fire and chatted for hours. It was a nice way to get to know each other :) 

Next morning (for me) I watched mom and Charlie's wedding on Skype. Good thing my camera and sound were off! Lots of happy tears were falling :) we had loads of fun designing a poster for the riding staff of 2013. I'll post a pic soon with explanation! The next few days were filled with loads of riding (and pain!) and plenty of learning. Karn is a really great teacher. I've learned a lot from her! Sunday was a bizarre experience - standing for the raising of the flag and the pledge of allegiance. Very hard not to giggle, as I felt much like an intruder looking in on some sort of cult gathering. 

On Tuesday the rest of the counsellors arrived for pre-camp. It was hard for us riding staff to integrate as they are all old hats at this and already have their friends here. We sat in many fun meetings while the overly PC big wigs skirted around the issues we were meant to addressing and basically achieved nothing at all. The riding staff went into town together to get our social security numbers. I'm still convinced that the lady who helped me literally walked straight out of the Flintstones. She spoke the way the birthing teacher from Baby Mama speaks! (Lolsies. YouTube it, please! It will make your day!!) On Friday night we had camp fire. I was expecting a FIRE (the way we do it) but sadly the American idea of a camp fire is about the size of a Weber fire for us... Me disappoint. Found out on Sunday what tent groups we were getting... I got the little ones! Yay, just what I wanted :) so I decided on Finding Nemo as my tent theme, drew an awesome (I think :-p) poster for the tent, and got ready for my little ones to arrive! That night all the staff went out together for dinner at the Lobster Pound. I'm ashamed to admit I was too chicken to try lobster (those legs freak me out!). Finally had a chance to make friends with some of the American counsellors which was nice.

Next post will be my first week at camp :) pics might take a while... Please have patience!

Stay classy! c",)

Old school :)

Sunday was a very fun day. We didn't end up doing the trail or hike because the weather was not great, but we went into New Haven and Jess showed me around Yale. It was so exciting to be at the historical and oh so famous Yale University!

We had a wonderful day wandering around between all the beautiful old ivy covered buildings (ivy league school, haha!). Interestingly, a common misconception about the term ivy league is that it came about because of the ivy covered walls of the schools, and their ivy planting traditions at graduation ceremonies. However, in actual fact, the name is more accurately attributed to the Roman numerals for four (IV), because there was originally a sports league comprised of four elite schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia) before being joined by the other four schools that make up the ivy league today.

Anyway, history lesson over :) I personally felt Yale was far more impressive than Harvard as old historic schools go. There was such an old and elegant feel to the buildings. It was like walking through Europe a couple hundred years ago! :)

Jess showed me a favourite haunt called Insomnia Cookies (pretty self explanatory). They are famous for serving warm, freshly baked cookies with milk at any time of the day or night! Very cool :)

We meandered in and out of numerous shops along the streets, one of which sold glow in the dark nail polish! I had to have :) and it works!!! We also stopped at the MASSIVE and infamous three storey Barnes and Noble Yale bookstore! It is not just a bookstore. It has clothes, electronics, posters, and so much more! It was mind boggling! I was astounded to find that most stores in America email your receipt to you rather than printing one! They're very big on "going green" over here!

On Sunday night, Jess, Jimmy and I went out for sushi which was very tasty, and on Monday morning I hopped on the bus which took me to the train which took me to the other train to get to Boston. I saw a very interesting creature (I don't feel comfortable guessing a gender because I honestly cannot say what this child was.) It was a teenager, originally I imagined it to be a boy as it was flat chested and wearing quite masculine clothing, but then I realised it had long-ish black and bright blue hair, and a lip piercing! Eish, I dunno who was more confused... The child or me!

I was overjoyed to find out they have wifi and plugs on their trains! I literally charged my phone and iPad the whole trip to Boston and spent most of it on Skype as the weather was awful and there was not much to see out the window :)

I have posted some pics on Facebook and earlier blog posts (you may have noticed they have changed order) so please have a squizz at them! It does take a long time for me to upload them, and my iPad is temporarily out of commission, so please be patient, I'll try to upload more soon! :) there will be a single post on my stay in Boston, which I will put up on Saturday when I am on the bus to camp. Eeek! I excite! :)

Stay classy c",)

The inside scoop!

Greetings from Connecticut! :) I am spending the weekend with my lovely childhood friend Jess who lives here. She is showing me the local lifestyle and I am having an absolute blast!!! Your mind will be blown with some of the details I am about to share about their convenience-orientated way of life! Mine certainly was! 

I took the train from Grand Central Station - I say calmly like the seasoned traveller I am :) - through to Union Station and then hopped onto a bus to the Hamden Town Hall where Jess collected me. The driving on the wrong side of the road AND the wrong side of the car thing took some getting used (it wasn't an issue at the back of the van because I couldn't really see the road) but I'm getting the hang of not silently panicking every time we turn the wrong way across the intersection into the lane that, logic and habit tells me, should contain oncoming traffic! Interesting fact - Americans are allowed to turn right on red! If there's no traffic coming, the red light is essentially a yield sign if you're turning right.

She has a gorgeous apartment on the second floor of an apartment building in Aspen Glen in the lovely and leafy town of Hamden. Two little birds set up home in the basket attached to her bicycle out on her balcony and had babies that are now snugly nestled in there. It is too cute! After dropping off my bags we headed out so she could show me her local haunts. She showed me Quinnipiac University, where she studies, which is absolutely beautiful!!! Their mascot is the bobcat, and the school is nestled at the foot of a hill called the Sleeping Giant. There is a plaque next to the bobcat statue with such a lovely little myth about the bobcat and the giant and why the giant is sleeping and how the bobcat watches over the sleeping giant. We walked around campus and she showed me the dorm she stayed in and their library and student centre.

We then went to Marshall's (their version of Meltz) where my attention was first grabbed by the fact that I was allowed to take SEVENTEEN items into the changing room at once! They have a grid on the wall upon which you can hang many clothes at once (obviously necessary when one can take so many into the changing room!) and then three hooks labelled "possibly", "definitely" and "tomorrow" which I thought was quite cute :) I got some amazing gym clothes and really cute denim shorts for laughable prices, then went to a pharmacy and here started the crazy experiences. I bought Chapstick which is the American lip ice, and used the self checkout and swiped my own credit card! I was so excited Jess started laughing at me :) as we left the store, we stopped and Jess turned to a machine on our right. It was simply an upright rectangular box (very originally named Redbox) with a screen on the front - their DVD rental system! We simply chose the movie we wanted, put in our dollar and change, and pop! out comes the DVD we want from the side of the box! Mind blown. Once we got home, we had a lovely workout at the gym in her complex before watching TV. Another interesting thing is their TV remote - so many buttons! Took some getting used to!

This morning we headed to Hammonasset beach (Jess's favourite beach) and on the way there I saw the largest flag I have ever seen! Simply enormous. Anyway, their beaches are so strange! Very hard, sharp sand, murky ice cold water and no waves! But it was such lovely weather, there were plenty of people who took advantage of it and came out to catch some rays! We had a lovely time tanning and reading until the mid afternoon, both got a little too crisp, I braved the shards of sand and the numbing water for a quick dip (thanks polar bear!) and then we headed home to change before going out for a bite to eat. As the afternoon progressed our sunburns have developed into very interesting shapes (spots we obviously missed when applying sunblock!) and we both look like we fell asleep on the sun and someone played pranks on us! I have red kneecaps and feet - very attractive :) 

We went to an Australian restaurant called Outback that makes the most amazing raspberry iced tea and burgers! It was so tasty! They brought us bread to start off with and the butter they brought with it was white! Apparently it's actually creamy-butter-ish type stuff. So odd! :) one of the very nice things about American restaurants is that most of them offer free refills on non-alcoholic beverages! So if you order a soda or juice they will refill it as many times as you want until you leave! The service is so jacked up here! As soon as you're done eating, if you say you don't want dessert or anything more, the waitron, as if by magic, immediately produces your check (I have to be very careful to not say bill or they have no idea what I'm talking about!) and you're set! 

We left Outback feeling very full and satisfied and went past a bank so Jess could cash a check (American spelling!). They have DRIVE-THRU banks!!!!!! We drove up to an ATM, she did everything from the comfort and luxury of her front seat and off we went! I cannot explain my reaction. There are no words. Jaw on the floor and eyes as wide as saucers doesn't even begin to describe me. Jess also explained that they have drive-thru pharmacies too. It's really a different world over here! She thought my reaction was hilarious :) 

After that interesting experience, we headed to a place called Joyce Leslie, which is sort of their equivalent of Mr Price but only for girls. Jess and I bought three bottles of perfume between us for $10!!! I could hardly believe my eyes. They had so much nice stuff for such great prices, I could easily have blown a small fortune in there :) we also went to Target, another pharmacy, to buy some more sunblock and I had my first experience with price scanners. They're located around most retail stores so that people can check the prices of things they want instead of trying to hunt down a sales person! Brilliant idea, if you ask me! For dessert we had chocolate frosties from Wendy's. I'm pretty sure I temporarily left this planet. It was a taste and texture sensation! 

So here we sit, watching Wreck-it Ralph, a little crispy and overheating a fair bit, but very satisfied after a fantastic day of exploring Hamden. I am having the time of my life and really enjoying this insider's experience of life in America! Jess is a fantastic host to have, as she and I have very similar interests so she is showing me all the sorts of things I would enjoy to do and would never have known to do as a tourist! Tomorrow we're off to see the city of New Haven and Yale University (yay!) and then do a lovely trail walk and a hike up the Sleeping Giant. More news soon and pictures should be up by tomorrow!!!

Stay classy c",)