Camp

Camp was an insane 6 weeks! I was lucky to have campers only 3 of the possible 4 weeks of campers (I didn't have any during Camp Confidence).

Week 1: Staff week was alright. I got moved into my cabin (number 4) along with my two assistant counselors. I was asked by the photographer if she could use my camera because she only had a point and shoot and "the camp camera is old" and she didn't like it or want to use it. I wasn't comfortable with her using mine because if something happened to it I'd have to pay for it. She ended up going through my stuff to find the camera because they wanted to use it for staff pictures! Not cool! The rest of the week was spent in meetings, making ceramics, setting up the craft room, and figuring out crafts.

Week 2: We had 6 little girls in our cabin for Cub Camp. All but one of them had never been to camp before. They all got along really well and I didn't have many issues with them. They did like to get on my bed a lot which made it really dirty/sandy really fast! We had a huge storm on Tuesday night (my night off so I wasn't in the cabin). Lightening struck between two sets of the cabins and made some lights flicker, blew the brakers, and made our smoke detector go off for a bit. Luckily, the girls weren't too effected by the huge pop sound and bright flash. Nobody was hurt and the girls went right back to sleep.
My assistants weren't the greatest though. One never helped during the day and rarely helped at night or in the mornings. Both of them decided they had better stuff to do during chore time, meals, and often during worships too. It was also nice that the one day I was going to be able to get my hour off the assistant who sat around all day decided that that should be her time to take off so I had to rotate activities with the girls instead of getting a break/some sleep. The assistants also disappeared for extended periods of time at night. Often times not coming back until midnight or later.

Week 3: This was my week off from counseling. It was still a kinda rough week though because we had lots of people with disabilities and I didn't always have enough help in the craft room. I managed though and I think most of the people had a pretty good time in crafts (thankfully).

Week 4: Family camp was absolutely crazy! It was really hot or storming most of the week. This meant crafts was crazy busy since it was the only activity inside and air conditioned. One day we had so many people in there all afternoon that we ran out of seats and room at the table! We had people sitting on our 5-gallon pails and standing. Of course families are there for vacation and most of them didn't care whether they took care of the things they used or not. Thankfully some families made their kids clean up their own messes and didn't let them leave til things were picked up.

Week 5: Oh the joys of Teen Camp. I had a great assistant except for the fact she worked in the horse barn which meant she couldn't eat meals with us, wasn't at morning worships, and couldn't help with chores. Luckily, much of that stuff didn't matter too much since it was teen camp. The biggest issue I had that week was one of the girls came to camp with "old nits" in her hair and had to see the nurse for a "precautionary" lice treatment. I was not okay with it and was paranoid ALL week. Of course it was the one girl in the cabin that had to walk right next to me and hang over my bed. She literally would walk so close to me that she'd run me off the pathway!
We cleaned the cabin like crazy Sunday after they left. We bleached the beds and swept the floor like 5 times. I also washed all my bedding  before the next group came. I thought week six wouldn't be so bad now... but how wrong I was.

Week 6: Junior camp was the worst week of camp ever! I hadn't seen any of my girls moving in cause I was so busy moving in other girls. I went back up to the store towards the end of registration and was told by the girls director that one of the girls had to spend the night in the nurses cabin for a hair treatment. Stressed and tired (also extremely paranoid again and terrified of getting lice), I put my head down on the table and said "why me?!" The response I got from the girl's director was "don't even complain right now". I was so disheartened I almost burst into tears when she said that to me. They treated the one girl but not her sister with whom she shared bedding and a suitcase as well as spent the night in the same bed.
The week went from bad to worse when my assistant counselor was scheduled for the cafe every single day. I therefore had NO assistant at all the entire week. I was exhausted even with an hour off each day. A couple girls were really slow going anywhere. One of them was 15 minutes late to morning line-call one morning and 10 to another. I think she made it to MAYBE one or two line-calls all week (we had about 4 a day) and they were not morning line-calls.
My girls were lazy and never wanted to do chores. They bickered and fought a lot. It got so bad I had a couple girls in tears. One night one burst out of the cabin in tears because she was missing her sister. Friday night one was off by herself crying because some of the girls said she was ugly.
Some of the girls wouldn't show up to line-call because they went to change or something. I would have no idea where they were so would have to leave the girls that were there on the field and run up to the cabin and bathrooms to try and find the other girls. It was awful!
One girl decided she didn't want to eat for the last 3 or 4 meals. Which wasn't good cause she'd passed out at lunch time! I tried everything I could think of to get her to eat but she wouldn't. I got the girls director and she ended up sitting with her long after the rest of us left until she finished eating.
I'd never been happier for a week to end!

I don't think I'll be returning to camp next year. Partly because of the horrible experiences this year but partly because I've graduated college (I finally got my diploma in the mail!) and need to find a real job with decent pay. I will miss some of the people though