Life at Girl Camp!

"Hey, Carnegie, show us how you get down!"
"We stomp, our feet, and grooooove to the beat
we turn, around, and shake it to the ground"
-post meal entertaiment in the dining hall

Ah, life at Girls' Camp!
What can I say, after all the drama and tension of last week, it's such a welcome change to have 120 sweet, quiet, well-behaving girls around the Iawah grounds. This week is also my first experience as cabin leader, and so far - it's quite good. I moved into Carnegie cabin on Sunday, soon to be followed by 8 girls (12 and 13 years old). Most of them already knew each other from school, and the others were integrated to the group right away. It's quite fun to be around them, I must say!

So, life in cabin is a bit different than life in Upper Iawah when Iwas on activities. Schedule's a bit more brutal (7am polar dip... sigh), and there's obviously a lot more responsabilities, but it's also strangely more rewarding. I have to point out that i'm very much trying to be a good role model, and not to incline them towards a life of tattoo-getting ;) During the day, I still have one period of waterski teaching, right before lunch. And sorry guys, but girls are so much more fun to teach.

Being in cabin means foregoing staff Bible study and attending Prime Time with the campers instead. The general idea's the same - except the songs are sillier, there are gestures to go along, and the themes/talk is a bit lighter. But no bashing here, it's still perfectly good - i'm enjoying this week's parallel between running a race and being a christian/running the race for God. And besides, where else would I learn a song saying that Jesus is rad and cool?!

One thing that the girls have to do daily while I'm at a staff meeting is cabin cleanup. So far, they have been amazing and we've had perfect marks! To help, they came up with the 10 commandments of cabin cleaning, which are now up on the wall of our cabin. I'm re-posting it here for your enjoyment.

1. Thou shall not have dry clothes on thy clothesline.
2. Thy floor shall be swept.
3. Thy bed shall be made neatly.
4. Thy shoes shall be neatly lined outside thy door.
5. Thy porch light shall be turned off.
6. Thy clothes shall be stored in thy suitcase with care.
7. All garbage shall be put in thy garbage can.
8. Thy shall not make thyself an idol from dirty socks.
9. Thy shelves shall be orderly.
10. Thy shall clean mosquitoes smears after swatting.

This week's theme is a repeat of last week, The Amazing Race. It's so much more fun to be doing the activities than running them! On Sunday night, we ran around camp grounds as a cabin, clearing 7 activites along the way, and came in first out of 14 cabins!! Leg two of the Race (last night) saw every cabin assigned to either the blue team or green team (we were green), and green won... meaning that so far, we're team number one. It's so cool, the planning committee is going all out on the theme, meaning we have clue boxes, detour/roadblocks signs, and even a mat to step on at the pit stop. And everything looks exactly like it does on the show, so cool! And it's not just me - the campers are loving it too.

So yeah... this is the past two days in a nutshell. It's very weird how time goes by - a day goes by in the blink of an eye, yet at night, when i look back upon it, it seems that it could have been a week, a month in terms of learning and of how much is packed into it. It's definitely safe to say that there's never a dull moment.

Cheerily yours,
Flick