Hey hey everyone. It's been a while since the last journal and man things have been crazy! All 250 kids arrived at camp about 2 and a half weeks ago, twitching with excitement, and flowing with arrogance. Nah, they're not that bad, some of them are typical little rich kids with a mouth on them which makes you wanna throttle them sometimes. Thankfully i have a lot of patience, cos america is a sue happy place so we have to be so careful with how we discipline the kids. The majority of the kids are absolutely awesome, and crack you up all day. My bunk has 18 kids in there (the biggest bunk at camp) aged between 13-14. One kid in my bunk blows me away every day. He is 14, and swims 10,000 yards a day every day, 6 days a week. He is smarter than i am, and probably more mature too (not that thats hard). Every single kid is amazing, and some are so talented at sport it blows my mind. But as a group they can cause some truoble, so i bought a cow prodder and just zap them every time they step out of line. Not really, i just show them my guns (thunder and lightning) and that puts the fear of death in them.
The daily schedule is pretty exhausting. Get up at 7.30, breakfast 7.45, then go down to the waterfront around 9 and teach 3 one hour long lessons of either canoeing, kayaking, sailing, windsurfing or rowing to groups of around 10-25 (there are 5 of us staff in the boating department all helping so it's pretty easy), then have lunch at 12.30, rest hour from 1-2pm, then we host 3 one hour long elective periods where kids come down and do pretty much whatever they want. Sometimes we will run games for them, but normally we just let them stuff around. Every now and then, no kids come down, so we get time off which is bliss. Then we have dinner at 5.45, evening activities at 7 (can include an all camp swim, sporting tournaments, socials with girl camps etc...) then bed at 10pm. It's a crazy day, but it is usually pretty chilled and the kids are frickin hilarious.
The camp has a non stop weekly schedule to break things up too. The last 2 days we had the olympics, so they divide the kids and counsellors up into 8 different countries (i was on New Zealand) and play competitive sports for 2 days straight. We came in 5th which was pretty crap, but everyone got dressed up and painted their faces etc... so it looked pretty sweet. I have a few photos i put in the photos section too.
The best bit about camp, by a mile, is days off. We get every second night off from 9pm till 1am, then half of us get every wednesday off until 9pm, and the other half get every sunday off. It's absolute madness on tuesday nights cos we don't have to be back to camp until 9pm the next night so we go crazy. All the pubs offer us cheap drinks and one pub has even started private parties for our camp and Camp Matoka (a near by girls camp) every tuesday night with insane drinks prices which is awesome. It's funny as cos one of the guys in the office rings up Matoka each Tuesday to let the girls know where we're gonna go and they come meet us out. He's our pimp. Then on Wednesdays, we have a school bus which a guy drives and takes us to different spots each week. So far we've been to Portland, Freeport (an awesome shopping town with designer outlets to soothe my homosexual tendencies), Old Orchard Beach and a few other towns around the area. The only problem at the beaches is most of the people in Manie are fat and ugly, so the locals on the beaches in their sexy G Strings, and flattering speedos leave us traumatised and needing psychiatric help. Personal Hygeine is obviously not a popular practice here. Uuggggghhhhhh!!
Theres so much goin on here it's impossible to tell you everything. Oh the highlight of the week was yesterday when the arrogant american staff challenged all the international staff to a tug of war match. The entire camp was there watching, all cheering for the american staff and we got out there and shat all over them! Man it felt good!
Oh yeah, cos i'm the canoeing guy i get to go on overnight trips out of camp which is awesome. Last Sunday i went on a 3 day canoeing trip down the Penobscot River which was amazing. There was 16 kids aged 10-12, and 4 counselors. You have to supervise the kids intensely because they love to disappear down little side creeks, but it was a cool trip. It was the full camp experience too which was cool - we slept in tents, cooked dinner on a fire, didn't shower the whole time, and had to dig a hole to take a crap. The kids complained a bit but they had fun. One poor kid was homesick the whole time and would start crying every hour so i had to keep running over to him and cheer him up constantly and take him in my canoe, but when he wasn't upset he was funny as. He lives in Beverly Hills on the same street as Brad Pitt which i thought was pretty crazy. Then i got back to camp for a couple days, then went on a 2 day trip down the St Croix river which is the border between USA and Canada. That trip was a shitload more fun. The kids were aged 13-14 so we didn't have to nurture them too much and it was cruisy as. We would paddle for a half hour, fish for a while, paddle some more, then fish some more. We only camped one night, and it was on the american side of the river so the next day i made an excuse to pull up on the canadian side so i could get out and take my first steps in Canada. I was so pissed off though, cos when the kids got out they all started spitting on the ground and half of them started having a piss because they were in Canada. I went nuts! They all hate Canada for no reason at all (kinda like how we pay out Tasmanians, or New Zealanders). The St Croix river is awesome, saw heaps of Bald Eagles, went through heaps of rapids, but depsite all that, i couldn't help thinking how good an eski full of beer would be. Mmmmmmm.... beer...
Well i think i'm almost done. Theres a shitload more stuff thats happened, but it doesn't sound as cool when you write it down so i'll leave it at that. Camp is awesome though, we only have 5 weeks left but i'll definately come back next year. I'm gonna put some photos up when my camera stops being a dickhead and cooperates. Thanks everyone for your emails etc... sorry if i don't write back or call you back. I'm flat out all the time and never have enough time to call or email, but i'll do my best. Hope everyone is well and Hatherleigh is kickin ass (cos Geelong is doin shit right now). Add comments if you want, or just send me emails and let me know all the goss. Thanks mum for the vegemite, i gave a huge spoonful to a Spanish kid and told him it was nutella. Shit it was funny, the look in his face when he started eating it was priceless! Anyway, take care everyone. Sampai Nanti!!
Casey
