My Backpacking no-longer-at-uni Adventure

Paris with Hannah!

susiekenzie — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:09:00 GMT

I flew into Charles De Gaulle airport from New York via Dublin (scoring an extra stamp for my passport) and found myself at customs about to wet my pants. No it was not the fact that I was finally in France after learning the language for seven years that was making me shuffle forward in the line, I had simply left it too long on the plane. I went to get up to go to the toilet but was told “we were preparing for landing” and to remain seated. Damn. I make it through customs (just) and bolt in search of a bathroom. Now in Australia if I wanted to indicate the need to keep going straight ahead I would use an arrow pointing up to signify this. Not the French. I saw an arrow pointing down next to the word toilettes so I dutifully went down the escalator with coat, hand luggage and passport precariously balanced on my fidgeting and someone desperate body. Australian girl pees her pants first time in Paris were the imagined headlines. Alas les toilettes were not down the escalator but ahead of where I had been standing, just up the hall. The stupid French use the arrows interchangeably to indicate the “keep going straight ahead” direction, much to the confusion of the poor tourists.

However, having peed and located my bag (ahem, my life) I set off to find the train. Having panicked and payed for expensive taxi rides in Boston and New York I was determined to find my way into Paris inexpensively. I had googled Charles de Gaulle to St Paul Metro and had found excellent info. I followed the crowd and boarded the shuttle to change terminals and arrived at the train station. I practiced my sentence for “I would like to go to St Paul Metro, how do I buy a ticket?” and approached the information man. The man in front of me asked a similar question in broken French and was replied to in English. I spun out my question and, to my delight, was replied to in French! I quickly switched on the French training and told myself I understood him. I then said “sur le map” which is not French at all, but he obligingly circled the stops for me. I fluently asked for and received my ticket and boarded my train – sincerely hoping I was not off to Germany or Belgium.

A group of young black French youths in fake designer white t-shirts were surrounding the only spare seat and I squeezed in with my bag. I couldn’t understand them but remembered learning in high school french how the suburbs have a common vernacular that tourists can often not understand. I did however hear “la roux” which means redhead. I also heard them laugh after. I was less than impressed. One of them said something to me as he got off the train which might have been something about smiling but I didn’t quite catch it. Maybe he noticed my fixed expression of determination (maybe it was fear) and the white knuckles clutching my travel wallet…

Anyway, after navigating and negotiating the airport and train system, changing onto another line in a huuuuuge metro station (Châtlet Les Halles) I popped up to street level in the Marais district. I took one look at the street with its very ‘French’ buildings, roads, street signs and shops and a huge smile broke across my face. I was in Paris! Finally! After beginning French as a subject in 2000 here I was nine years later on. And I was very happy about it. The hostel where my friend Hannah and I were staying in was just around the corner and my scribbled down version of googlemaps got me there. I was half way through paying when Hannah turned up at the door. I left the baffled receptionist in possession of my unsigned for credit receipt and ran to the door! We squealed, we hugged, we even jumped up and down on the spot. Eventually the French receptionist got a little shirty and demanded I return to the desk to sign. Woops. But it really was soooo nice to see someone I knew from home and to not have to introduce myself! We lugged our bags the four flights of stairs to our rooms and collapsed on our beds. Phew. Relief. I was in Paris (!) with a friend (from home!) and I had made it here on the train. Yay!!

I was a wee bit jetlagged but made it out of the hostel in search of dinner. We ordered in French to the hot Parisien waiter but sadly he replied in English! The next morning we went on the New Europe Sandeman’s free walking tour. This was fantastic! We walked to all the famous monuments and instead of gawking at them through a camera with no actual knowledge of what we were looking at the guides explained everything in detail which was actually really interesting. Apart from Notre Dame and the usual highlights we also saw the fountain in The Devil Wears Prada which Anne Hathaway throws her phone into! I got overly excited about this and Hannah got a photo of be “throwing” my phone away. After tipping for the tour (they are basically free!) we caught the metro up to Montmatre and Sacre Coeur. This area is really touristy but is very cool as well. After trekking up the steep streets we made it to Sacre Coeur. This very large domed church is pretty impressive! The domes are huge and the view from the steps! Wow! I didn’t end up climbing the Eiffel Tower but I think the view from Sacre Coeur is good enough; you could see the entire city.

It turned out that my non-communicative brother Mike was actually in Paris the same time as me! Despite initially not wanting to travel with his little sister he must have decided that my language skills might come in handy… Anyway, we met up with him in Marais and went out for dinner. Mike was having the same dish as me so I said “le même chose pour lui” which I hope means he’ll have the same, but the (again) very attractive waiter laughed and shook his head, saying, “no, no, no, he must try” and taught Mike how to say what he wanted, it was all pretty amusing.

Hannah and I next made the trip to the Arc de Triomphe and Les Champs Elysée. We took the normal photos of us under the arch then set off to shop! Now being probably one of the most expensive shopping strips in the world it was no surprise that we failed to buy anything. I was actually a little scared to go into some of the swankier shops considering I was wearing shorts and flip flops! (Sorry I can’t call them thongs again yet!) I even made Hannah stop at one point as I had to reapply my sunscreen! How stylish was I!

Hannah and I also went to the Sorbonne University where both of us had once dreamed of studying…then made our way to the Luxembourg Gardens. While these gardens are beautiful, spacious and containing a very nice palace the best part was an unexpected Firemen’s Parade! We were sitting in conveniently placed deck chairs admiring the lake when we heard parade music. Hundreds of firemen then paraded past us in shiny metal helmets! Bizarre is the only word for it!

Another highlight was our trip to Shakespeare and Company’s bookshop. It’s the oldest English Language bookshop in Paris and is a fantastic place packed full of old and new titles. Upstairs there is an old library section and fold down beds for writers who live there! I was tempted to stay for a bit…

Hannah then left for her French cooking school and I caught the metro to meet my parents after three months away.

Trek America - Freedom Trail Part Two

susiekenzie — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:35:00 GMT

The van arrives in Bear Country in Pennsylvania. Despite “going on a bear hunt” in our van we did not see any bears at all, but we did have to remove all foodstuffs and cosmetics from our bags and put them in the trailer that night. Apparently bears really like toothpaste and are prepared to invade a tent to get it. The next morning we were up and at’em and in the van at seven am setting off for Washington DC. This was supposed to take us nine hours but Captain Charisma got lost for an hour. This was annoying enough in itself, but then he tried to DENY it! The girls in the front with me were like, “Ah, haven’t we been through this town before?”

“Errr, no. No we haven’t.”

“Did we just go in a circle for an hour?”

“Ummm, well, yes. I was supposed to take a left not a right at the freeway…”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. We were less than impressed.

We arrived at our camping ground, set up the tents, then headed into DC for the “illumination tour” of the monuments. This is advertised as an included activity in the brochure and we assumed this was something one would normally pay for… No, it was Captain Charisma walking ten metres in front of us occasionally murmuring some history. To his credit he did actually know a lot about the monuments and what they represented and it was very interesting. What I found more exciting about DC though was not the actual history, but since three of my favourite TV shows are The West Wing, JAG and NCIS, and are frequently set in DC I got overly excited when I saw “set pieces” from the shows… Oddly though, the White House was something of a let down… This is apparently a common reaction as we expect a superpower such as America should have a grand palatial building for their head of state. But no. Apparently when the founding fathers were setting up the country, DC and the White House they purposefully decided to have a somewhat understated building and not a palace; since they were moving away from a ruling monarchy with a palace and absolute power, they wanted the President to not have all the power and to live in a place reflecting this. Don’t get me wrong, I’d live there, but it’s not Buck House and is greatly overshadowed by the looming dome of the Capital Building which can be seen from most points of the city. But then congress technically has more power so I suppose this makes sense… (thanks West Wing).

We explored DC the next day as well, and after having seen the WW2 and Vietnam memorials as well as the Washington monument (tall stick in the sky) and the Lincoln Memorial (it has the pond in front of it which Jenny runs through in Forest Gump) we decided to see serious and sombre places. And where did Carla, Nat and I head to? The International Spy Museum – without a doubt the best place in DC and the best museum I’ve ever been to. Now I do need to preface this with the fact that I have other favourite TV shows other than the ones listed above. Alias and Spooks are two of them and I was raised on the James Bond Series. Needless to say I was going to find this museum interesting. But what was more amazing was: Operation Spy. We were sent on a mission, given code names (mine was Ginga Ninja, appropriate for a redhead), had to kill the security camera feeds, crack the code of the door into an office of a corrupt government official (I got that, it was CIA!) and then break into his safe and photo copy pertinent documents using an Alias-esque pen scanner, commando crawl to the door (while being shot at!) get in a very bumpy back of a truck (Natalie and I were very unspy-like and felt motion sick!), report to HQ and decide if our asset in-country was a double agent or not. Awesome fun. Now if you didn’t get into it, it wouldn’t be that great, but Carla, Nat and I were Uber-Spies the moment we were given code names.

After this we went to the museum and explored all the KGB and CIA documents, personalities and gadgets we could see. There was a James Bond Aston Martin with rocket launchers and ejection seat, real cyanide pills, lipstick guns, false identities galore and too much information to take in our limited time frame. Unfortunately we had to meet rest of the team at the agreed upon rendezvous point and did some fairly intense power walking to get to them (only once the other two extracted me from the gift shop!).

The New York Yankees played the Baltimore Orioles that night and we were there to see it. Having played baseball as a kid and softball at high school I was pretty excited about this but sadly the Orioles were kind of crap… even their fans agreed. But a quintessential American experience none the less.

Final day. Back into the van. Drive back to New Jersey and we wave goodbye to Captain Charisma (not tipping him!) and venture into New York City for the night. Eek. Only slightly unnerved. What a week. Terrible tour guide but it mean that we all got on that much better, what brings girls together better than a good bitching session? I saw the sights I wanted to see, I went through seven states, met some great people and once I develop my awesome disposable camera – hopefully have some awesome photos to go along with the memories.

Trek America - Freedom Trail Part One

susiekenzie — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:02:00 GMT

So, after 10 weeks at camp I was let loose on America and out of my very safe and secure camp bubble. After a quick trip to a friend’s apartment Chicago I was at the airport (by myself) ready to get on a plane to New York City… I was just a wee bit scared… Chicago was such a cool city and is often compared to Melbourne so I felt quite safe and hey, I had people I knew there, now I was heading off to start my Trek America tour in New York Effing City on my own… Agghh. I woke up from my slumber just as we flew over Manhattan; I looked out my window to see a large green statue rising out of the water… who was she? Hint, she had a torch. Oh My God, I thought, I’m in New York! I peered further out my window to see gigantic sky scrapers apparently growing from the water – there is no island to see, just buildings. Needless to say I woke up very quickly.

Upon landing I had to initiate my mission of getting from La Guardia Airport NYC to La Quinta Inn in Secaucus, New Jersey. Yes, that’s right, having been in NYC for 20 mins I now had to change states to where the tricky Trek America team depart their tours – “New York Area” is how they cunningly describe the location. I found myself at the Port Authority Bus Terminal – clutching my passport – staring at list after list of buses, the 520 (mine) nowhere to be seen. I glanced over at the information desk, empty, I trekked up and down the stairs, dragging my too-large-bag, fighting the crowds and the overwhelming urge to cry. I decided to trust my usually awesome sense of direction (for any Americans reading this, that’s sarcasm…) and just guess where to go… I ended up climbing four flights of stairs (avec evil bag), deciding that no, I was in the wrong place, descending said four flights of stairs and then going down four more. Dead end. The tears prickled, the face went red. Then I saw a man in uniform directing fellow lost people. I literally flew at him, and in between haggard breaths asked where the fucking 520 bus left from. Oh sure, he said, right at the end of this hall, he said, indicating a door 10m from my current crying spot. I was on the bus, heading out of this terrifyingly busy and confusing city and off to my hotel, where I would be alone in a room for the first time in 10 weeks! No campers, no co-counselors, just me and my sleep inducing king size bed! Wooo hoooo! I literally lay on this bed for two hours dozing, loving that no one was anywhere near me!

The next morning I made it to the unhelpfully-located departure hotel and met my fellow Trek Americans. Of thirteen passengers, ten of us had been to camp. Now those of you who know me know that I have little difficulty talking, but do on occasion clamp up when faced with lots of unkowns… but these weren’t strangers, they were fellow camp counsellors! You’ve never seen strangers talk so much! I believe we may have even sung a few camp songs (sad I know). Then our leader arrived. Our leader who, after being with us a total of five hours, was christened by me “Captain Charisma” (again, Americans, that’s sarcasm…). Our fearless leader managed to put off side almost the whole bus within an hour of meeting him. I won’t bore you with endless ranting on this pitiful character’s lack of not only charisma, but also a personality… Seriously. And before you feel sorry for the man, remember, he chose this job! He chose to tour 12 young women in a bus and be void of personality, tourist information and the ability to communicate. Needless to say that the group quickly turned on him and bonded closely with each other as a result.

Seven days in a van (no, not a bus, there was very little leg room), 12 girls, 1 boy, 1 leader, 7 tents to be put up each night and taken down in the morning, multiple toilet stops (complete with a pee scale of 1 – 10 of how badly you needed to go – a combined total of 10 meant we stopped), multiple American highways and their delightful pee-smelling rest stops, three great cities, two national parks and some pretty large waterfalls.

New Jersey to Boston in the van.

We stopped for lunch at a leafy park (this was soon to be replaced by the aforementioned pee-smelling rest stops) and Captain Charisma (soon to be shortened to CC) introduced himself. We then moved onto lunch and I realised that Trek America has failed to pass on to the leader the rather important info that I am gluten intolerant. Great. I’m sure you who know me can guess what my face looked like at this point… We then piled back into the van and arrived in Boston after six hours on the road.

Boston. Great City. Laid back, easy to get around, friendly with great shopping and cool markets. We met our fearless leader for dinner at an over priced seafood restaurant. He informed us budgeted travellers that the lobster was their specialty. Great! We did have a nice dinner, all chatting together, and then the non-splittable bill arrived. Great work Captain, take 14 people to an expensive restaurant, most of us with notes only and don’t ask if they split bills. What was even more shocking was that he was totally unable to figure out how to split it! With the help of my new found friend Natalie from Manchester we snatched the bill from his hands and did it ourselves. I was rumoured to appear like the banker in Monopoly (my accountant father should be proud). Eric then further impressed us by walking 30m in front of us all the way back to the hostel, leaving us to guess which way to turn when he was out of sight.

The next morning we drove to Harvard University in Cambridge and witnessed CC’s skill in backing the luggage trailer! The two men running the car park watched perplexed, as out esteemed leader attempted what seemed like a 70 point turn, threatening with each turn on the wheel to jacknife the trailer. Needless to say it didn’t take long ‘til they kicked him out of the driver’s seat.

We had a great tour of Harvard with the most entertaining guide! He was so funny, energetic, charismatic and fun that we politely inquired if this Harvard Math Student would like to be our tour leader. Apparently he had to attend some rather important classes and declined our offer, but we had hope for a while. The uni is really quite impressive and our leader’s entertaining anecdotes made for a very fun morning. However we had to rejoin CC by the end of it and we were back in the van – the parking attendants getting it on the street first!

We drove for a very long time until we reached the Berkshire Mountains and were presented with our campsite (after the Captain practically drove the trailer down a cliff and wondered what the scraping sound was coming from the back… I think he forgot it was there). It was such an impressive place; true to all the American nature documentaries and films set in “the wild” that I’ve seen – towering, pencil-straight pines, tranquil lake lapping at the shore, views for the eyes to stretch to. Ok, ok, enough descriptive writing - it was pretty. We cooked dinner, chatted a bit and were tucked up in our tents quite early.

We were up early as well, keen to “hit the road” and were dressed, breakfasted and ready to take down our tents. CC had given us a very informative demonstration of how to put up a tent, which was essential as several of the girls on the trip had not been camping before, but he had failed to tell us how to “correctly” take it down, which meant that he hovered over us all, giving “helpful” advice on how to take a peg out of the ground. We then got back on the bus and headed for Niagara Falls.

Niagara. Wow. Seriously impressive! We first saw the falls at night with a Vegas-style light show. The normally white and foamy falls became neon pink, purple and orange! We had arrived on a fireworks night and the falls, the fireworks and the hotels perched above the water all made it pretty spectacular. Having broken my camera I was onto disposables (this one embarrassingly had a star-spangled banner on it!) and I am yet to develop them, but I hope I’ve got a good pic of that night, it was pretty special.

We saw the falls again in the daytime when we boarded the Maid of the Mist (Jim Carey is on this in Bruce Almighty when he finds out he doesn’t get his promotion). He bobbed past the American falls first before moving into the spray coming from Horseshoe Falls. It was already raining and when we got to these falls I was very glad I had on not only my raincoat but my awesome oversized blue poncho! After a thorough drenching we returned to the dock and had numerous “all-in-the-same-poncho photos.” After this we changed into equally attractive yellow sheets of plastic to explore “Cave of the Winds” which is a set of staircases under the American Falls. Apart from the impressive thundering water right next to me, the best part of this was the free shoes we scored! We were each given a pair of green, blue and white rubber sandals (you know those velcro ones?) to stop us slipping. Being budget travellers, first thoughts were – they’re free! Then we decided that we looked rather cool all wearing the same multi-coloured shoes and proceeded to wear them not only the rest of the day, but the rest of the week! We thought we were cool anyway. But seriously, Cave of the Winds – impressive. We climbed around the stairs and platforms with the falls literally metres from us. The top platform involved getting pelted by the wind and water and it felt like you were in The Perfect Storm or some such apocalyptic movie! There was a lot of water and given we were a group of twelve girls, a lot of squealing!

Back into the van we piled – none of crossing the border to Canada, I wanted to, but was a wee bit scared of border patrol – and we set off for “Bear Country” in Pennsylvania. More on that in the next entry…

Life as a Camp Counselor Cont'd...

susiekenzie — Sat, 5 Sep 2009 00:40:00 GMT

This is the second and final recount of my time as a summer camp counselor, and is continued on in the dot point form, otherwise I would literally write forever on camp weirdness and strange camper anecdotes.

● Needy American children and freaky over encouragement.

I have never used an expression as much in my life as I used “good job” to those children.

“Good job, you’re sitting on a horse and not falling off! Great job!”

“You made your bed – Good Job!”

● Camp food – egh!

Eating like a child really isn’t as fun as you thought it was now that you’re 22, if I never see another chicken nugget I’ll be happy.

● Camp feet!

Cracks, blisters, thong marks (sorry, “flip flops”), unscrubbable dirt stains, oh and they really do smell!

●"Bug Bites"

I don’t know where these mutant mosquitoes came from, but they sure do itch more than the ones Down Under. Most people’s legs looked like some form of flesh-eating bacteria had been let loose on them.

●Sticky Skin.
I didn’t use moisturiser the entire summer as my new skin routine consisted of sunscreen, bug spray, sunscreen, sunscreen, a layer of dirt, sunscreen, and wait for it – more sunscreen.

● Meal Time Screaming

Never before had I been half way through my meal to be screamed at to “shake my booty” before I came to camp. I was sitting with Stanford cabin, picking my way through my meal of fried something, when the table next to me screamed in typical high pitched girl voices, “Hey Stanford! Shake your booty!” To my surprise all the girls stood up on the benches, dragging me with them, and proceeded to dance and sing:

Jump, shake your booty, jump jump, shake your booty.

I’m sure you can imagine the actions… Meal times were also interrupted with requests for cabins to “show us how to get down,” “do the Macarena” and the “beaver song.” One particular meal time the counselors had had enough and we made our own request:

“Hey campers!”

“Hey what?”

“Hey campers!”

“Hey what?”

“Eat your DINNER!”

They were not impressed!

● Questions!

Oh Jesus! I have never been asked so many questions in my life! What time are we doing this? Where do I go for this? What should I wear? Where do I meet you? What’s for dinner? Should I eat this with a fork or spoon? (Whichever, leave me alone.) Should I wear my flip flops to the lake or my shoes? Should I change now or later? And the best question ever, came from the biggest questioner of them all, Meredith, on the final night of camp.

“Suze, should I take my sheets off my bed now and pack them, or should I leave them on my bed now, so that I can sleep in them and pack them in the morning?” she said with real concern and bewilderment in her voice.

To which I replied, at the end of my tether, “Meredith. Do you seriously expect me to answer that question?” She decided to leave them on her bed. Good job!

● And last, but definitely not least… Homesickness.

Did you know that homesickness is contagious? Did you? Well it is! My cabin was absolutely fine until one girl, the evil Ellie (actually quite a sweet kid), developed a chronic and highly infectious case of I miss my Mummy, which quickly spread among the girls. Now I also get homesick, so I should be sympathetic, but this girl! Ah. She began by coming to breakfast in tears. I tenderly asked if she was ok. To which she replied, yes, why? Well, I said, you like you’ve been crying. No, she said, I just have extreme allergies. Oh ok, my mistake, This developed into her waking one of us up each night to inform us that she was in fact very homesick, so homesick in fact that she had just vomited and wanted to go to the infirmary. Dear God. This happened three times in one night! Ah.

Well this ends my camp ranting and as I’m currently travelling the world I look forward to detailing all my exciting adventures as I effortlessly navigate subways, metros, Megabus routes and speak less-than-perfect French. Next up will be The Adventures of Suze and Trek America…

Life as a Camp Counselor

susiekenzie — Tue, 1 Sep 2009 00:56:00 GMT

It was with great aspirations that I began this blog way back in May, sitting down at the computer in Australia. I imagined filling blank web pages with my witty reportage on my Summer Camp experience in Decatur, Michigan, The United States of America (said with a nasally twang). Well, it appears I may have overestimated my blogging abilities since it is now September and this is the only subsequent entry… Apparently being a camp counselor is kind of time consuming – who knew? Now that I have escaped the Camp Bubble I finally have time to fill you in on my insane summer as a camp “bitch” - even though counselor is the technical term.

For a start I worked in the stables. Now the camp director did inform me that this would be a busy job when she hired me. Whatever, I thought, I just want to go to America, she was probably just trying to scare me right? Wrong. Twenty horses. Sorry, twenty crap, easily sickened, temperamental, stubborn horses with a will to poo all day long (and yes I did have to pick up all the foecal matter, every day, fun times). Then there was the barn staff. Talk about multiculturalism! Sandra from America (complete with cowboy boots), Kim ‘the incomprehensible’ from Scotland, Ellie from England (say it with a posh accent and you’ve got her figured out), Yehudit (I still can’t pronounce that properly) from Israel, freshly released from the Israeli army and ME, the Australian red head, constantly slathered in sunscreen. Oh and just a side note: everyone in the horseworld believes that not only are they are right, but that you are most definitely wrong! So combine five cultures, add a dash of know it all, an alarm beeping at seven am every morning, a cup of bratty, rude, but still-cute kids, twenty shitty horses, an insane spitting lama we had to feed and a healthy sprinkle of poo. What do you get? Insanity!

There's so much weirdness about camp, I have to dot point:

●Americans have no cultural knowledge outside their own country!

I was asked these questions on a regular basis:

“Is it winter there now? Wow. Does that mean you don’t get a summer?”

“Why don’t you get snow at Christmas?”

“Do you speak Australian?”

- and my personal favourite -

“Where is Australia?”

To this I replied, in the Southern Hemisphere. The child still looked blank. So I tried, next to New Zealand. Same expression. Um, below Indonesia…

“Oh yeah, I know Indonesia!”

Seriously? Seriously? Ah,

● Twelve-year-olds’ taste in music!

I have never been subjected to more Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers before in my life. Also there was some hideous song that went along the lines of “Somebody call 911, burning on the dance floor, wooahh” which my campers had an impressive ability to scream at me. I was asked if this was the music I listed to in Australia to which I replied, no, because I am not a twelve-year-old!

● Getting changed under a towel.

I can now say that I can change in to and out of any outfit (including riding jodhpurs!) under a towel with no issues whatsoever. For ten weeks I jiggled and wiggled under the towel, in front of the oddly curious kids, always surprised at the end that I was in fact dressed and had not exposed myself in any way!

●Braiding.

I made the foolish mistake of informing my fifteen kids in my cabin that I knew how to French Braid. Stupid. All my girls stood in a line to my bed, hair brushes in hand, eagerly awaiting their turn. I could barely move my fingers the next morning.

●Lice.

Nice follow on from braiding. Yes my camp had lice and everytime they mentioned the L-word all I wanted to do was scratch my head. Even the counselors had to endure Nurse Debbie (think Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest…) trawling through our hair.

●Insane Infirmary Staff.

I had the misfortune to be sick at camp. I actually ended up with pneumonia, which was just delightful. However, what was more unpleasant was dealing with the nurses! Aforementioned Nurse Debbie is a force to be reckoned with and her and her minions firmly believe that all illnesses, cuts, abrasions and infections can be cured with a bottle of water. I arrived with a fever, a cough, blocked sinuses and a sore ear. Hmmm, you might be dehydrated...can you pee into a cup for me? What am I seven years old? I firmly told them I didn’t believe it was dehydration that was making me attempt to cough up my lung, but no, I was forced to pee into a cup, have it tested and what do you know? I wasn’t dehydrated! Shock horror! I actually needed to see a doctor, bad luck water bottle, I’m sure you’ll be asked to cure the next sick camper of counselor!

More on camp life coming soon, including the Meal Time Screaming, Bug Bites and Camp Feet.

Two Weeks and Counting

susiekenzie — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:23:00 GMT

My pack lies next to my cupboard door spilling onto the carpet. In the lamp-light I’m typing by it appears to have been disembowelled, or at least stabbed repeatedly. Wow, I think I need to stop watching crime shows… The other night it was standing upright in my cupboard and after a particularly stressful day I was neurotic enough to think that it was staring at me. Glaring at me, if you will, for not having done the test pack I had promised it. So freaked out by this pack’s willingness to be packed and strapped to my back I actually got out of my warmed and cosy bed to shut the door, and keep the glaring clothing vestibule out of sight. I think I really need to go soon; the pack not only stares at me, but is now a victim of a homicide.

Anyway, the point of that alarming story is that I am ready to go. Set, prepared, pumped to depart, eagerly awaiting my exit. I still have the general things to buy – Aussie flag, new Dunlop Volleys, Panadol, Nurofen, Imodium (let’s pray I won’t use that), an empty USB unlike all the photo filled ones I own, and other totally necessary items I will somehow justify buying. Do I need a new wallet? I mean, mine has a tiny scratch on the back. No! Stop it!

Two weeks and counting hey… two weeks ’til I hop on a plane and fly to the States of America which are oh so United and begin life as a Camp Counsellor. The customs official who interviewed me a few months back asked me if I had had much to do with children. I said no, not really. And she laughed. This is slightly unnerving, but I do have one very good card to play. I am teaching horse riding. And what do young and teenage girls like more than boys and under-age drinking? That’s right, PONIES. So I am hoping the squealing girls will be so excited by Silver, Hi-Ho and Flashdance (these are obviously what Americans call their horses) that they won’t notice my lack of experience in “working with children”… And the boys I'm teaching? Not so sure how to handle that, but I am thinking some sort of Cowboys and Indians reference might help me there...

So. Two more weeks of trying not to spend money, catching up with friends before I go, helping my pack lose a few kilos, learning to ride again, attempting to quell the occasional (ok, frequent) surges of panic, re-checking the date and time of my flight and waking up each morning remembering that I am not at uni, and do not have essays to write this week. Very weird. Very exciting. And, ok, very freaking scary for a girl who’s only been away as far as New Zealand…