June 26 – 30

June 26 is the start of our first session. The campers arrived in the afternoon and prior to that, we all gathered to take our staff picture. This is also the first day all of us are wearing our official uniform – a cute sightJ. Our staff shirt, navy blue shorts as well our tie. A few song practices and the sight of the first camper…..

We had a few campers that arrived by car, and upon their arrival the counselors led them to play games to keep them occupied. I must say a few of the counselors did a wonderful job coaxing a number of homesick and crying campers. Our spirits were high and our teamwork helped each other. The high morale certainly helped me, I haven’t done this for a long time…. And I mean a long time….. Relating to children, entertaining and keeping them occupied the best that you can.

Soon enough, the rest of the campers arrived in the 2 yellow school buses together with their yellow luggage van (which I thought is amazing to have fitted all campers’ luggage. It does look like some campers came packed for a month?????). For those of you who would go oohhhs and aahhhs over young cute children, you will be weakened at the heart when you actually see the campers lugging their sleeping bags and their respective gear around.

Both Turtle and myself will be taking care of the Super Sitters program, a program that introduces basic babysitting skills. We will each have 5 campers in a patrol.

The campers had a campfire in the evening after dinner and the rest of us counselors went for a planning meeting during this time to finalize our respective program schedules.

After the campfire we tucked the campers into bed after reading the camp prayer together at our first Quiet Meeting.

Turtle and I stayed up to tend to a camper who had a stomach upset and was crying in her bed after the rest have slept. It is kind of unusual for me to be so alert throughout the night. Back home, I sleep like a pig – if we had a thunderstorm, I would not have sensed it at all. I felt the sense of responsibility is growing on me as I adjusted into this ‘still unfamiliar’ role. Also, I don’t do mornings! At CLN, it’s wakey wakey for the kids by 6.30am which means I have to get up earlier at least by 5.45am. Over here the day gets bright by 5am and night doesn’t get dark until probably around 9.30am.


June 27 - 28

The girls in my patrol are amazingly super. The first thing they were asking me already was of course was where my home country was. I gave them a few clues but by dinner they had already figured out by my description of the national flag that hangs at the Dining Hall. I can sense they were a little curious of me, telling me that the longest they’ve ever been on a journey is 13 hours and couldn’t believe that I travel 21 hours to be with them this summer. This is all good, part of the camp’s effort to enrich the campers’ experiences through our cultural exchange.

The program for the campers on their 2nd evening was the Campers’ Council’s voted choice of event: The counselors fashion show – the campers have to dress their counselors for the fashion show according to a theme.

For the first time, the campers in my patrol showed so much excitement and laughter. I was re-named ‘yin yang cheech’, I am ‘a Rock Star’ with hand-painted tattoos (using marker pens) on my arm and every part of my body that they could draw on. I was given immediate on-site training of how to look cool and how I should do my ‘celebrity’ wave at the runway later. It was all fun and giggly.

At ‘backstage’, the rest of the counselors met up and we all looked absolutely fabulous! I thought Taz, as ‘Wind’ the Red Indian Chief was an absolutely great dress-up. A few warm-ups and the next thing we know, we were all strutting the runway already.

If you’ve never participated in a beauty pageant, you have definitely missed out on the thrill factor – that was what we all experienced! I totally collapsed when they announced ‘yin yang cheech’ as the 3rd place winner. Joey, Atlas, Flipper won the first place (god knows what they were – if my pictures can help, go figure. The ‘shipwrecked’ lifeguards were 2nd place.

The program for the following evening’s event was the Wet & Wild Party. Name says it all. Imagine the soaking wet t-shirt and the cold wind blowing on you from the Adirondack Mountains...

June 29

I had a floating lunch with my patrol today. The girls had wanted to go boating and kayaking but unfortunately it was made known to them that it is not feasible to include these activities since they are in the babysitters’ program. I thought I was planning a cool surprise to them by arranging the floating lunch, somehow they figured it out – thanks to my dumb-dumbness. I wrote the word ‘waterfront’ boldly on one of the lunch packs while preparing them for the waterfront crew who will be boating with us.

I am glad we did the floating lunch. They liked the idea of boating in the middle of the lake and having their lunch – so did I!. Later in the afternoon, they practiced their skit for the Final Night Campfire and Scouts Own.

Unfortunately, halfway through the practice a heavy downpour came and then a series of events changed the initial scheduled plans for the Final Night. Due to the thunderstorms, a power outage happened. To avoid the possibility of rising waters, we started moving all campers out of their tents with their luggages and gathered all of them at the Dining Hall for the Final Night Campfire.


June 30

Campers go home – some of them went home happy, while some went home with tears in their eye. I blew kisses to the campers in both Turtle’s unit and mine as their bus left the camp grounds. It is a happy sight to see all of them grinning away from the back of the bus.

We had our 24 hr break starting at 3pm. By night we headed to Lake George to stay the night in a motel. Pooh, Coke, Pik and Jib make great travel mates. We had a wonderful dinner (Coke and I shared ribs) at this friendly Grill called ‘Fire & Ice’. We were supposed do a couple more emails (but it didn’t happen due to the lack of time) before heading back to camp.