Saturday, September 08, 2007

Family Camp July 29 - August 4

Speaker:Peter Bloom
Director(s): The Churchill family
Extra room in the dining hall: none

Family camp was the largest camp of the summer, but that did not keep it from being a fun enjoyable week. The Churchills were back to direct their 100th family camp. Well not really that many but they have been doing it for a while and always have a fun week planned. The week featured fireworks, a candle-light skit night, an exciting volleyball tournament, a slip-n-slide on the front lawn, a scavenger hunt for the female staff, and a week of tenting for the male staff.
The week was a nice "break" from some of the regular duties of camp. It was great to just hang out with the family's talking with the adults and playing and leading the kids. It was nice not to be responsible for a cabin and have to know where they were ALL the time. The structure was also very enjoyable as it was much more relaxed than a normal week. And also having a long free/beach time is always a bonus, especially when the weather is beautiful which it was almost all week. There was a volleyball tournament on the beach which were made up of teams of 4 or 5 people. Some teams went all out and made nice uniforms, or played just to be good-balls, or played for keeps. Well the nice uniforms didn't cause the PEI boys to win, but they went out looking stylish.
The skies weren't always blue and the sunshine wasn't always pouring either. On Friday night, traditionally skit-night, there was a huge downpour/thunder and lightening storm. It was an amazing and haunting experience to watch the storm move in across the water and feel the wind pick up then to have the heavens open up and it pour rain. The thunder claps were right overhead, and I'm pretty sure one of them almost hit James Howitt as he was dancing/filling up the water tank out in the rain. When chapel was all done, many of the campers decided to have run and slide in the huge puddles that gathered out front. I think the photos do a good job showing what it was like. But it wasn't just the young guys out there, there were a few gals (Amanda and Jenni), and Lawrence acting young on his birthday.
Speaking of Lawrence's birthday, that was one of my personal highlights of the week. Like myself, Lawrence has been blessed with a head full of tight curls. His are slightly grayer than mine. Since it was his birthday some of the staff carried me into breakfast in a canoe while I was dressed wearing one of his shirts and also with my head full of baby powder to make it look like his hair. I don't know if any of that made sense, you had to be there. I also ate every meal that day with him. It was just a fun day.
Since it was so stormy the power was knocked out which meant we had skit night unplugged and had snack by candlelight. Very romantic and tasty.
Another highlight of the week was the when the Fraser family blessed us with their talents both musically and artistically. The Fraser family is a large family (12 people or something like that) that have come to camp the past 3 year from Quebec. All of them play instruments so they put on a mini-chapel for us playing a collection of hymns and traditional folk songs on violin, cello, and piano. After this they did a chalk drawing and told a story while doing it. There is no use in me even trying to explain it. All I can say it was completely mind-blowing. Art is a powerful thing.
Since there were so many campers, both sides of the loft were used as cabins for the family's. This meant that the staff were out in tents for the week. Well the girls found a way to end up staying up at B and E's place. But us boys had a good time out in the tents with nightly readings of Narnia in one cabin and Harry Potter in the other. There was more fun in the tents but I will not blog about it.












































Where's Waldo?
Philadelphia?
Australia?
Sackville?


Monkey and New Monkey

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

go team flint.

Anonymous said...

ryan