Lefra'sJourney2TheStates

only 10 more days to go!! going backwards from track and field day!!

loz — Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:32:00 GMT

my oh my i haven't been on the computer for quite some time!!

I suppose I will go backwards again! So, today was one of camp's biggest events of the summer, track and field day!! It had been postponed 2 times already due to the inclement weather, but today was a ripper day with the sun shining just about all day aside from the little bit of cloud cover!!

We started nice and early at 6am finishing up all the last bits of the games and activities in our respective areas. I was assigned to the area known as the horseshoe (funnily enough it's somewhat of a horse shoe shape!!). Anyway the theme of the day was greek gods, each area was given one or two gods to base their activities on. My group's gods were Athena (god or warrior of wisdom) and Dionysus (god of drinking and parties!!), we had a small maze, an obstacle course, a few relay type games, a pin the tail on the donkey type game and a few others!! It turned out to be a good day, but it was nice to be finished (I shall put photos up soon!!). However the day was not quite finished!!! After dinner and free play, we had evening activities which were a few fun races and some dancing and the closing ceremony. The races involved a relay with the specialist staff, athletics staff, adventure staff and waterfront staff - waterfront are usually tipped to win because they take it waaaay to seriously - but after never having won the relay before the specialist took out both the male and female races!!!! yeah us!!! the guys won by heaps (and these are the guys who do computers and video arts against the waterfront/adventure/athletics staff...lol) but the girls race was a bit closer. I ran first and we had really good baton changes, but it was still a close finish!!

After the fun races the awards were announced and then we moved down to the waterfront area for the closing ceremony!!! This involved the lighting of the 'olympic' torch and 'olympic' flame (oh funny story --> as they're lighting the torch, they announce that they're going to light the 'olympic' flame and one boy yells out 'No!', this boy is from a bunk where they have a few catch phrases and saying 'no' to certain things is one of them, this bunk also overuses 'dinner', 'enough', 'don vito' and 'sideburns', i'm not too sure of their origin but anyway..lol

anyway time is about to run out but i shall continue this later!!

hope everyone is well

love loz :) xoxo

Gallery: more camp fun

loz — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:33:00 GMT

camp fun times and noodle salad

URGENT! Looking for a new voice. Will pay high price!

loz — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:14:00 GMT

so i woke up today without the ability to speak!! oh dear. i thought i would have to struggle through the day doing activities without being able to speak louder than a mouse. however after the first period of the day it became evident that trying to teach the worst bunk on camp would be impossible so we cancelled period 2!! and period 4 and period 6 and 7!! lol so i've had a day on camp of relaxing and trying not to talk and trying to explain what's wrong without talking hahaha

i've had the kids asking me why i could talk all day yesterday but now i can't..there were even counsellors who knew it was my night off and just thought i had a big night at Honesdale's finest drinking establishment, the Limerick, know as the library whilst in the presence of campers. i like to point out that it's the library with the vending machine :)

anyway yesterday was a lovely day and the weather was awesome!! i had the entire afternoon off but went to ceramics with my bunk during period 6 to finish off my most amazing tea light candle holder thingy haha. the kids thought it was good haha. today however is a different story; it's very muggy and hot and unpleasant!! oh well i guess it is summer here!

anyway i shall fill you all in later with some lovely camp stories. i must prepare my science room for parents/visitors day which is on sunday and is also the day when the first session finishes and some kiddies go home!!

loz

Gallery: Camp Shenanigans

loz — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:49:00 GMT

Fun Times With Camp

and the chaos continues

loz — Mon, 7 Jul 2008 13:01:00 GMT

so the lovely kiddies have been here for just over a week now and have just about settled in. there are still a few who are a tad homesick every now and then but i guess when you've been sent away for at least 3 weeks and you're only 8 years old it could be a bit traumatising...lol

my first week of activities has been ok, some groups enjoyed it and others didn't..i guess you can't cater for everyone so oh well!! but this week should be better - we're using these catapault thingies called trebuchets...they're fun and we throw things..i'm thinking next week we'll make some slime and dye it all pretty colours!!! hopefully they'll like that...

so this week i have seen some interesting behaviours from the campers...firstly i have never seen so many angry children in the one place at the one time, it is somewhat scary, there has already been one camper sent home via a mental institution, sad but true. there is also a girl who is not being sent home despite the campers and the counsellors in her bunk wanting to send her on her merry way...she's had super violent outbursts, which is also sad because she has no control over them because of her condition. and despite the 'bad' campers there are a lot of good campers, who love coming to classes and asking questions (even if they are only about the difference between crayola crayons and some other brand of crayons...lol so overall it is a good experience!!!

I've had two days off so far which have both been equally as enjoyable. the first one was at skinner's falls which mum tells me is one of the most trecherous parts of the delaware river, i went down the tiny rapids in a tyre tube and had no worries!! lol...i'm pretty sure that because the river was quite low that it was safer than it had been in previous years!! it was a good day and the weather was awesome :)

battery is about to die

to be continued....

photos

loz — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 23:54:00 GMT

ok so i'm slowly adding photos bit by bit!!! here are some more in the same folder!!!!

some photos

loz — Tue, 1 Jul 2008 11:50:00 GMT

I've started uploading photos to the blog...keep an eye out for more!!!

Gallery: LA + Orientation

loz — Tue, 1 Jul 2008 11:44:00 GMT

and so the children have arrived!!

loz — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:19:00 GMT

ok so today i spent the day continuing the set up of my 'science fun lab'. i'm not entirely sure how much science is actually going to happen but hopefully it'll be fun. i'm planning on covering topics like colour and light, astronomy (making box planetariums!!), making fossils with plaster of paris, etc etc, if anyone has any inspirational ideas please feel free to let me know!! lol

so from breakfast time onwards the campers started arriving (breakfast is at 8.10am so who knows what time they had to leave to make it to camp, the nearest town (honesdale) is about 20mins away, there were mums (sorry MOMS) and dads walking around the camp all day just checking out the place and obviously the campers as well. i saw cars come in from as far as florida and illinois, there were also cars from the surrounding states of pennsylvania like maryland, new york, new jersey, etc.

because i'm a specialist counselor as opposed to a cabin counselor i dont share a cabin with the campers but with other specialist staff, but i have been assigned to a cabin for certain activities and to relieve staff of their duties. i've been put with girls aged between 10 and 12, and they have conditions ranging from autism to learning difficulties. they all seem to be lovely girls, minus one and were really excited to be here!! with our cabin we eat meals, spend horseshoe time (free time) with them, help them get into bed and sometimes get them ready for breakfast. also with our bunk there is a thing called OD (on duty) and we sit with a bunk until midnight (at the latest) or until a counselor has come back to their cabin. i only get OD 2 times max per week. i have 12 free periods a week so during those free periods i can plan for lessons, go with my campers during their activities or just sleep. we're pretty much on the go from at least 7.30 until 12am or sometimes later, so it's a pretty full on day.

anyway, so saturday is my day off and on the days off the camp has organised for staff to go on day trips to honesdale and the surrounding areas, i've signed up so this saturday we've got a trip into honesdale and then we're also going to a place called skinner's falls. it should be a good day and it'll be nice to get out of the camp for a little bit!

oh i have my first injury of the summer!! i now have a bruised thumb from playing frisbee!! nothing major guys so don't stress!!!

anyway, i have much planning to do before tomorrow, shall endevour to keep up-to-date with this blog

love loz

;)

camp!!!

loz — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:42:00 GMT

ok so continuing on from my travel from NYC to camp (a nice 3 and a half hour drive...what happened to 2.5 hours...not at all impressed!!!).

I met a few people on the bus also going to camp, so it wasn't so daunting getting off the bus into a crowd of staff who had already arrived. We then had a short meeting in the dining hall - now this was quite amusing coz tim who is one of the camp directors is an old dude from england, we've likened him to nigel thornberry from the cartoon the wild thornberry's, he repeats everything he says and always says everything super slow like we're retarded or something!?!? it's always good for a laugh, i shall endevour to record a video of him before i leave so we can all experience the Tim!

the days have somewhat blurred into one another...so things may not be in order...

ok, so basically we arrived had a meeting took our stuff to our cabin (which is so grotty...the girls from waterfront had made an absolute pigstye of the place, and even i can;t compete with their mess!!!) there are 6 bunks and 2 of the beds are empty so there are 10 girls in the cabin, half of which i can stand!! there is lorna from scotland and scottish people really do say 'wee' at the start of sentences and she is lovely, then there's amy and april from perth WA, traci, emma, sarah and carley from england, and michelle and tess from melbourne. we have named our cabin OzLand...

It's taken me this long (5 days) to realise that our cabin is actually on a lean, quite a significant one in fact, I'm pretty sure nothing is going to be done about it however...i guess you could say it adds character!!!

over the past 5 days we've basically had orientation meeting after orientation meeting....which is super exciting i can tell you that!! NOT. although they have been informative, which is the point, but i'm pretty sure they could condense the info if they didn't repeat it so often, i'm guessing they want to really make sure that we don't forget what we've been told!!!

the other day we had a swim test, which some of you may know that when it comes to swimming it's definitely not my strong point! however you will all be so very proud to hear that i completed the intermediate swim of 2 laps!!! which is probably 50m...i also believe that lake water is heavy and weighs you down!!

last night we had a round robin between dept's so there are the cabin counselors, waterfront staff, adventure staff, kitchen, specialists (thats me!!) and athletics, the theme was disney and the specialists went as characters from toy story...i went as jessie the cow girl, we also had slinky, stinky pete, the aliens, the army guys, woody, buzz, mr potato head and the piggy bank!! we came 2nd after our performance that we gave at the start and from the points we accumulated from the games!!!

oh bugger i have 1 min left on the computer! so i shall continue the stories of fun times and noodle salad at a later date

love to you all again

loz

take two

loz — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:06:00 GMT

so i had just written a short novel when the computer decided to crap itself and not respond...

anyway I am at camp now and have started to settle in. I arrived here thursday arvo at 5pm after a very long and tiresome journey. It all started when I went to catch my flight and I'd checked in and then it ended up being delayed by 2 hours and 20 mins!!! soooo not fair so my flight was at 1.50 am rather than 11.30 pm :( sadness... after the flight i caught a shuttle bus into NYC!@!!!!! (i found another guy going to a camp so we travelled together to columbia university where my camp people were meeting us!!!...

i shall finish this story soon...have run out of time on the computer

love to everyone

loz/lefra/lauren xoxoxox

Sights of LA

loz — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:10:00 GMT

Ok, so today we had to check out by 8am (so early!!) because they had to get ready for other early arriving camp counselors..but that worked out well because the girls who I shared a room with and I decided to do a bus tour around LA! We also went with 6 other Aussies who are doing the camp thing as well!

We met in the foyer at 8.30 as required to meet a bus driver who would take us to the tour bus people's office where we would pay and get on another bus with other people!..this was all well and good once we got going (except for the blasting air con!), but mid-trip the bus driver gets on his phone and he's asking for directions, so the trip to the offices which really should've taken 20-25 mins took about 40 mins!!

We finally got on our bus and had a super funny croatian guy (think his name was Danko?!?!) as our tour guide/bus driver, his main speciality was knowledge of where all the famous people had been arrested..lol..about half way through the tour we had to swap buses coz ours was overheating (it has been a very warm day today)

Firstly we went to Santa Monica Beach, we stopped for about 10 mins to take photos (sooo touristy), it was really pretty but not a whole lot of people, which was nice! Then we went along highway 1 for a bit to get to the famous people's houses, unfortunately we didn't see anyone famous despite hearing from people that they saw Usher the day before (shattered haha), we went past sylvester stalones house, the fresh prince of bel air house (not in bel air...definitely shattered about that one, although if it was in bel air we wouldn't have been allowed in because bel air is a gated community with security on the gate), we also saw Adam Sandler's house and a few others.

After checking out the rich people's houses we drove to sunset boulevard and saw where all the night clubs are and expensive hotels! not that exciting and by this stage it's starting to get quite hot!!

After sunset we went to Hollywood boulevard and saw Mann's Chinese Theatre, the walk of fame and kodak theatre. There are swarms of tourist and lots of street vendors who bug you every metre!! Mann's Theatre was pretty cool coz they've got foot and handprints of heaps of different famous people including harry potter people, shirley temple (signed in 1935 - her hands and feet were so tiny!!) julie andrews, Gregory peck and heaps of others. We went to come souvenir shop with awesome postcards and trashy crap that people actually buy, omg and there was this gigantic pen, but i could justify spending 5 bucks on a pen..lol

After hollywood bl we went up the hills to a lookout where you can see downtown LA and also the hollywood sign, which was cool, skyline was super hazy but we could still see a fair bit.

Next we went to where LA was founded and if i can remember correctly it was originally called El Pueblo something something del Los Angeles...not quite correct..lol, I didn't go through the market because we only had 15mins and a few of us went to the Union Station, apparently it was the last train station to be built before public airtransport was introduced so the architecture was amazing, with huge arches and ceilings etc.

After El Pueblo we went to check out some of the skyscrapers and that wasn't that exciting and then we had a long hike home (on the bus)

So today was long and tiring but really worth it!!

It's 6pm now and my flight out to NY is not until 11.30 so I have a few hours to kill so I'm going to try to find something not massive and hugely oily (just how the americans like it...omg at maccas their small coke i reckon is bigger than the aussie maccas medium size...no wonder they're so fat here!!!)

anyway hope everyone is well..talk to you soon

love loz :)

Getting ready to leave!!

loz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:38:00 GMT

Well it's 4.30pm and tomorrow I shall be on a plane and off to Auckland (only stopping over for a few hours) and then on to LA!! I arrive in LA at midday thirty and I'll do camp orientation somewhere there (people meet me at the airport so I'm hoping that I won't have to use my brain too much!!

Then I'll be off to NYC...wooo how excitement!!

Anyway I shall keep you all posted

Loz