Last half of the summer week-by-week summaries:
Week 4: Half of the storage shed done, "Thug Thursday" was created, kids called me "Rambo" more than my actual name, and theme of the week: "The sign of a healthy compromise: everybody's pissed." Over halfway done!Week 5: Storage shed is complete! Predator vs. prey ≠ tackle football, ruined my healthy streak after three months (man voice ftw), and a kid asking one of my staff, "Do you take a pill for your unicornitis?" among other hilarious quotes.
Week 6: Still sick (still without a voice), got thrown in the lake/did a backflip into the lake/got a bruised rib from hitting the boat while doing a backflip into the lake, signed 561 blue cards, finally learned to climb, and made a zen garden! It's the final countdown (do do doo doooo).
Week 7: Apparently nothing happened?
Week 8: Last week! Nature trail is complete, mini-amphitheater is complete, signed my record of exactly 600 blue cards, my staff made me a mini to-go zen garden complete with mini Buddha, and received a $500 scholarship for... being awesome at my job I guess?
(Okay, I actually am SO EXCITED about the scholarship. The whole staff voted anonymously on who they thought deserved it, and apparently it was pretty much the same across the board. It is a huge honor to have received it. I had been worried all summer about how I should have gotten a different job in which I could make more money, but I'd felt like I needed to be at camp. So when it was announced that I got the scholarship, I almost cried. It made my whole summer that much more worth it!)
Survey says...
So I'm pretty pumped about how my summer turned out. Every summer before this, I've come home from camp saying I'm never going back because while there were fun times, it just wasn't that awesome. But this summer was different! I was a director, meaning I got to boss people around and yell at them when they did something wrong and make my area (Nature!) exactly how I wanted it. So I essentially had the power to make the summer go exactly how I wanted it to, and that's what made it so awesome. My staff were great! The beginning of the summer was super, super rocky, but we got everything figured out by the end of the summer and it was mostly smooth sailing at the end. For the most part, they did a great job of helping me build the "nature is not that lame" idea; they taught their classes with enthusiasm and really got the kids to enjoy their time in the nature center (which is a difficult task!) They all seemed to really enjoy working in nature, and most of them are looking forward to coming back next year (which usually never happens!) I'm thinking about going back as nature director again next year because there are still tons of projects I have in mind to improve the area, but there are lots of reasons why I need to move on, too. I guess we'll see how I feel this winter when they begin the hiring process all over again. Random memories...
There are so many stories I could tell. I could write entire books on the fun memories and challenges at scout camp. But these are just a couple of my favorite memories.
There are so many stories I could tell. I could write entire books on the fun memories and challenges at scout camp. But these are just a couple of my favorite memories.
Every Sunday night (the first night at camp for the kids) we would have a campfire program where the staff would prepare skits and songs and show them for the camp. One week we were just messing around and decided the campfire was missing something: a full-on aerial battle. So in between skits, about 40 staffers ran down the campfire bowl steps with our arms spread like airplanes, making sound effects and everything. A couple smaller guys got up on peoples' shoulders and pretended to be gunmen, and shot other staffers/planes down, so we were all just flying around the stage, running up and down the steps, in between aisles, trying to avoid getting shot down, and then making crash landings when we did get shot down. There was even one guy just standing in the middle of the stage making the sound of an air raid siren. Pretty soon, everyone had gotten shot down, except for one of the gunmen on shoulders-- so he hopped off in his parachute, and a couple of staffers came down as helicopters to rescue him from the scene, followed by someone with a guitar playing the M*A*S*H* theme song, which was the cue for all of the airplanes to hop up and run off the stage at the same time. The kids thought it was hysterical, but the staff thought it was even funnier. We did it every week after that.
Each morning before breakfast, the camp would gather to raise the American flag, and each night before dinner, the camp would gather to lower the flag. After the raising or lowering ceremony, one of the senior staffers would get up in front of the camp to dismiss them to the meal with some silly verb, like "skip off to the dining hall." I, of course, got a little more creative. Some of my favorite ways to dismiss the camp were, "Do a barrel roll off to the dining hall!" or "I lost the game - off to the dining hall!" or "Do the truffle shuffle off the dining hall!" That last one didn't end too well. We had stroganoff every Tuesday night, so sometimes I even said "Strogan-off to the dining hall." That one was pretty funny.
Towards the end of the summer I started getting bored doing the same thing over and over again, so I started to mix things up. First, I started writing hilarious stories and leaving them in random places where I knew people would find them. I would save them to peoples' computers, put them in peoples' backpacks, leave them on a picnic table somewhere. People didn't know it was me for like a week until they caught me hiding one. I also invested in a squirt gun. I would bring it to Nature every once in awhile and my goal for the day would be to sneak up on each of my staff members while they were teaching and squirt them. The kids all played along and thought it was hilarious, but I can't say the same thing for my staff. It may or may not have turned into a full scale squirt gun war, complete with alliances, picnic table fortresses, etc.
Around camp we had lots of plants with edible berries, such as huckleberries. So when they were ripe, we'd just go around picking berries, and we would either say we were "being giraffes" or "being bears," pronounced "burrs." Once, we even collected enough huckleberries to cook them into a dutch-oven cake to give to our boss! It was a delicious breakfast for us all one Saturday morning.
Funny quotes from little kids at scout camp
I don't know if you knew this, but kids are seriously hilarious. These are just the quotes that I wrote down to remember. There are stories behind some of them, but a lot were just random or overheard.
I don't know if you knew this, but kids are seriously hilarious. These are just the quotes that I wrote down to remember. There are stories behind some of them, but a lot were just random or overheard.
"Why are you asking a di-lexic how to spell?!"
"If someone with multiple personality disorder threatens to commit suicide, is it considered a hostage situation?"
"I don't like problems, I like kangaroos!"
"So you know how God is white? I think the oil crisis is happening because God meant for the president to be white, too..."
"Why you calling my ho a sista!?"
"I like to be by myself. Because I think people are following me, but then when I turn around... They are."