Fraser on Tour!: Hard times in session 2

Hey! Hey!

I'm happy to report that session 2 here at Camp Greentop has come to a close and I am writing this to you now whilst on my second break. A slightly more relaxed affair than our first break in Baltimore as I sit here typing in the camp Dining Hall after a great night which included a lot of partying and a lovely meal at TGI Fridays.

If I had to summarise session 2 in one word it would be: tough. Session one now feels so distant, free and easy in comparison. So I bet you're now thinking, what was so hard about this session? Well I'll tell you now but first I'll put in a little disclaimer. Many of the things I'm about to moan about are likely to seem quite trivial and I'm sure there are worse job's I could be doing right now but anyway, here it goes.

Session 2 was difficult for a number of reasons most notable of which was that camp had a full capacity of campers. During first session there weren't quite as many due to school's finishing later because of a rather unpleasant winter so to go from that to actually seeing camp at its fullest was quite a shock to the system. More people to look after meant that everyone was more stressed and to make things worse for me, I had to move out of my cabin in D-Unit to go and stay in B1 cabin on the other side of the site to accommodate for our extra campers. For me, this made things fairly difficult as the actual geography of the situation meant that it was even harder for me to create a rapport with the campers in my cabin, a task that is already quite difficult as a program leader when I spend all day running activities. Also my injury played a big role in my mood during the week. I found it frustrating that certain aspects of my job were just so difficult to do with my leg in the pain it was in and few people had the time to sympathise or help me. It wasn't just that, I just found many of the things that I enjoyed so much in session 1 didn't excite me as much cos they weren't new. By Tuesday and Wednesday I had hit rock bottom physically and emotionally and I must say those two days were probably my worst and toughest days at camp so far.

But life goes on and this post needs to get much more happier really quickly! I may have painted a rather over the top, bleak picture there but I think overall this session will have been very useful to me come the end of the summer. I learnt many hard lessons from those days of breakdown but the most important one was to keep going on. I may have been drained every evening once the campers went to bed but what I found to be pivotal to doing my job successfully was pushing every to one side and making sure I do everything for the campers. They take priority. As long as I keep a smile on my face and make sure every single one of them has the best week at camp that is humanely possible then I can be at peace. It's a state of mind I shall be sticking to for the rest of the summer and it was certainly a key lesson for me to learn.

So let's talk positives now. The one thing that I am most happy about from session 2 is the pool. After successfully negotiating the lack of one during the first session, a temporary pool was installed so that Ben, Sam and I could run our program as it should be. Every day we ran some really fun activities (not to mention the skits we did to introduce them at breakfast time of which one of them involved me dressing up as Michael Phelps!) such as Capture The Flag, Dance choreography and Aquatic Olympics which the campers and counselors seemed to really enjoy and it was especially great to see so many campers (who probably wouldn't have come to our activities in session 1) joining us in the pool. Even Jeremy, a non-verbal and one of my favourite campers who generally didn't go to any activities, jumped in twice on the final day which was a real personal highlight of mine. I found being in the cool pool water to be really beneficial for my leg too and as my leg got better my mood picked up so by Thursday when I could walk without my crutches I was back to loving life and immersing myself fully in the Camp spirit. The theme days this session were jungle boogie dance (which I watched enviously as I couldn't dance on my crutches), Twin Day and Halloween Banquet which were all super fun like in the first session.

Twin Day Activities at the Pool

D2 Cabin Photo (from left to right)- Braxton, Andreas, Me, Snoopz, Cam, Nick, Pedro, Rory, Michael, Chris, Mark and Marnix

Camp Olympics- Matt and Zoe are all ready!

Me and Ben singing 'Sunshine Mountain' at the camp fire

Halloween Banquet

Well, that's all I've got to say about session 2... I think. I say this a lot but I do genuinely mean it, I am sorry about the essay I've just made you read. I do feel that it is all relevant to tell you though and hopefully it gives you a great insight into life working at a summer camp and life here at Camp Greentop. Session 3 starts on Wednesday and I'm pretty sure the only way is up from here. It's a full adult session so things will be slightly different to our first two sessions here and I'm sure it will be just as enjoyable and challenging. Pictures will be added to this when I get decent wifi access (probably our next break when we are planning to go to the beach!) so hopefully these posts I write will be more bearable to read soon.