As many of you know, summer camp has been a part of my life for many years.....it all started at Camp Wyldewood when I was about 11 or 12. I was driving to the Retreat Center on my way to community basketball practice, saw that field of horses, and the rest is history. I began volunteering (really just being pesky and trying not to be in the way TOO much - this stage lasted until I was about, oh, 16) every summer at the Wyldewood stables, arriving at 7:30am and working all day doing stable-y things and also maintenance work (clearing pastures, repairing fence line) until it was time to go at about 5:30pm. And I loved it! I did this faithfully for 7 straight years, finally making it onto the glorious summer camp payroll for my last two years there, since they couldn't legally pay me until then. But I loved it and learned a lot about horses and just plain hard work.
Then I missed a few years when I went to college, spending the summers of 2004 and 2006 in a little foreign land called Italy.
I had thought my summer camp career was over - after all, as far as duration goes, I was well into retirement. I had other things going on in my life (making money for college unfortunately had to be towards the top of the list), and I wasn't even considering working at camp anymore. However, I was called out of my retirement by one Ross Cochran and the wonderful camp he directed called Camp Tahkodah to fill the position as Head Wrangler for the entire summer. Now, as much as it is denied, there exists a competitive banter between these two camps, and I accepted the job with some mixed traitorous emotions. But man, what a blessing that camp has been to me. I have met and worked with some of the most amazing people in those cabins and have made many close friendships that I know I will have for many years to come. I learned a lot about working with people and children of all ages and backgrounds, God, faith, teaching, and so many other things. Not to mention that I got to be around horses ALL day, one of my favorite pasttimes. I was very lucky.
And so, after working at Tahkodah for three consecutive summers, I had graduated college and was already looking forward toand getting ready to start my work in Italy, done with college, done with camp, and ready to start new things. I've already written about most of the things I've done since I've been here, which for the most part are things I had been expecting to do. Camp was not something I was expecting to participate in again....at least not in a counselor position. But it seems that maybe camp just has to be a part of my life!
Lindsay Walle and I were invited to be part of the staff at the Italian Church of Christ summer camp, which is not usually a service opportunity for most Avanti workers as it requires a certain level of language skill and not many workers study Italian before starting Avanti. And once again, I was so blessed by camp. The camp is held at a facility (no log cabins for italians!!) that is in the Marche mountains, on the east coast of Italy - so beautiful, and wonderful weather! I'll give you an overall setup to give you an idea of what it was like. It was divided into two, one-week sessions.
The first was for kids ages 6-13 and we had 71 participants, which means we were packed full. We were also a little understaffed - I think we had less than 20 staff members - which means a week-long marathon! This was our daily schedule:
8:00 Wake up call
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Room Cleaning
9:30 Morning Devotional
10:00 Bible Class
11:15 Activity Period
12:45 Lunch
2:30 Rest time
3:30 Sports period #1
5:00 Snack
5:30 Sports period #2
6:45 Showers
7:45 Dinner
9:00 Evening Devotional
9:30 Evening Activity
11:00 Lights Out
11:30 Everyone Asleep
This was the schedule for both weeks, except the older kids got a little later bedtime. Our theme for the first week was "The Fruit of the Spirit". Each day we concentrated on one of the "fruits" and had a biblical story that coordinated. My responsibilities the first week were co-teaching a class (in ITALIAN, mind you!!) of 23 10-yr-olds (18 of which were energetic little males), arts & crafts (a new experience, which including planning the activities the day before), and then I was also in charge of taking the kids that didn't want to play sports on hikes during both activity periods in the afternoon. The first week was....a little more stressful than the second week, for a few reasons.
1. There were 71 kids.
2. I had to teach and communicate pretty much 24/7 in a foreign language.
3. We had no counselor orientation, so I was unaware of the fact that most of the water faucets in the building do not provide drinkable water. Oops. So some children (whom I provided with the water) and myself drank who knows what substances until I was informed of my error....on Thursday.
4. Something else that I wasn't told is that the camp is located in the middle of a National Park, and so all the bouquets of flowers we were picking for the cooks were illegal. Caught this mistake a little sooner. On Wednesday.
5. We were understaffed.
But it was so much fun, and I had some people from my church that I got a ride there with - Julie Giordano and her two girls Michelah and Deborah. The last night we had a "banquet" which consisted of grilled meats and watermelon outside, and then a end of the week show, displaying all of our many talents and projects that we had worked on during the week.
During the second week, we had 23 kids ages 13-18 and our theme was "Facing Your Giants". And let me say that I had so much fun with them, too. It is a different dynamic of fun - more like hanging out with friends most of the time. We had some excellent classes - I did not teach, but I participated as an "assistant" in the oldest class. My parents were also at the second session - Mom worked in the kitchen and Dad was a counselor like me. Dad, Roberto, and I all helped out with the Chorus/Theater group during the activity period, which was really neat. The kids recited some Psalms, and then for Chorus Dad had translated the songs "The Joy of the Lord" and the newer "Our God is and Awesome God" into Italian and we taught those to them, which they really liked. The last day two of the older boys ended up being baptized, which was wonderful. We didn't have a pool or river or any large body of water, so the men brought out an old freezer and filled it with water and that's where they were baptized. :) To make it even more special, one of the boys had almost not been allowed to come to camp on account of some past behavioral problems. He even admitted that this year he had planned on causing chaos at camp...and then to have him decide to be baptized! It was wonderful - I don't think there was a dry eye in the whole place. Then we went on to have a huge water/mud fight which was delightful. We cleaned up from that and had our cookout and talent show.
It passed so quickly, and I can't even begin to tell you every wonderful thing that happened there, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the great things that happened and how special a time it was for us all.
