Our first week of Sachigo Lake camp!

Composed Friday, August 7, 2009

Today was the final day of our first week of camp in Sachigo Lake. We had a community treasure hunt, and it was the best day all week – in terms of both weather and camper behaviour! Campers went around town to six stations, where they completed word searches, jumbles, decoding, jigsaw puzzles, and scavenger hunts to lead them back to their starting point, and then claim their prizes of having their faces painted! We were lucky that our numbers went up again after yesterday, where there were only 10 campers in the morning (but still 20 in the afternoon). Today was back to normal, with just under 40 campers in total joining us.

At the end of the day, Ryan and I went to have a radio slot from 7-8pm, and we were joined by a number of our campers. Two of them read the crumpled word stories that they completed earlier in the week, and then five girls and Ryan read out the Radio Play adaptation of “SpongeBob’s Slap Shot”, which I organised a couple days ago. We went a bit over time, but it wasn’t a big deal, as there was nothing scheduled after us, and it was just proof of how successful the slot was going!

Earlier this week was quite hectic fairly consistently. Our activities have been going really well, but campers have a tendency to go out into the halls, where school staff members are working on cleaning the area. Discounting this, things are running really smoothly, and Sachigo has been draining, but amazing!!

You might think that the lack of internet would make me, an internet addict, have more free time than imaginable, but this has not proven accurate. Instead, I have found myself even busier than last month, prepping different areas of the camp and classroom. Lizzy’s taken to teasing me about the fact that I am rarely without paperwork in my hands. It works well though, because I keep occupied and there’s less paperwork for other people! It also pays off because I haven’t had to make as many meals!

Last week the Dentist came to town, and he’ll be here until next Friday. He’s a 30-year-old U of T graduate, and has started joining Ryan and I on our morning runs, so we are now up to a full three people in the running club! There were three other new faces in town this week; two girls were in to run a Science Camp, and a third woman was here doing evaluations of the camps in the community. Having the science camp meant a bit of competition for campers, but we were able to meet with them and arranged it so that our hours were opposites, and that seemed to work out pretty well! Next week we should have some people returning from CLE in Thunder Bay, but a local baseball tournament is on, so our numbers could skyrocket, drop completely, or stay constant. In other words: who knows?

I’m hoping that the nice weather stays for a while yet (I had two days in shorts!), and that next week runs smoothly. Lizzy’s feeling a bit ill, but hopefully a relaxed weekend will fix that, and then we can all be on our feet running for Monday.

I can hardly believe we only have two weeks left. Muskrat and Sachigo have both been astounding, and I hope I keep myself posted on them in the following year.

My favourites from this week:
Just kidding! (Really? No! Just kidding! So no? Yes! Just kidding!)
Ut-ta bun-ga shoon-i-ah. (Give me money.)
People in M.D. have been talking about us to their friends here!
Book borrowing!
Jumping into a freezing lake at 10:30pm under a full moon.

That’s all from me for now!
-V