The Day Camp Saga

Oh me, oh my, what a summer. What can one do but laugh? Every week has been its own kind of adventure...

Astoria's day camp went great like last year (although can someone explain why a one-hour trolley ride is necessary, and why you'd feed children rice crispy treats right before it?). Of course, being the first week, we as staff had our own kinks to work out with lesson plans, choosing/leading songs, and team dynamics...

Camp got done on Thursday, July 3rd, and on Friday Gretchen drove me down to Corvallis to spend 4th of July with me and my family and the Brownsville croquet club. She left on Saturday, but I stayed home until Sunday and took the bus back to Portland, where Gretchen met me and we drove back to Collins, eating blueberry crisp with makeshift rhubarb spoons on the way...

We had the whole next week off from day camp, so on Monday we attended CPR/1st Aid training. Then on Tuesday and Thursday I spent a total of 11 hours pulling stinging nettles from around the parking lots and trails at Collins Retreat Center -- and I only got stung 4 times! At the end of the week, I went on an 8-mile (!) hike with Gretchen and her friend Melia up past Punchbowl falls.

Then, we had Molalla. It was their 3rd year and they had a lot of returning volunteers, which you’d think would make it easier…sigh. Gretchen, Katrena and I commuted from Collins every day and spent our evenings making up skits for morning watch. Katrena got sick part way through Monday and couldn't lead her craft station in the afternoon, so that was interesting. And then Julia had to leave two of the days before day camp was over, so I had to take over music at campfire. And we had to do an evening program for them, and they had an extra half day of camp, which means we had to expand our curriculum and come up with a new set of activities. Whew!

I was wiped out, but after a good night's rest, Gretchen and I decided to venture into Portland on Saturday. We drove to Milwaukee and then took her scooter to First UMC the closing worship service of Western Jurisdictional Conference, the consecration of new bishops. Got to see my grandmas and my parents and tell them about the most recent development in my search for a volunteer placement: that I would be interviewing at a place in New Jersey in the coming week!

Clatskanie was next...where do I even start? Well, first there was the fact that Gretchen wasn't going to be there because she had to be in charge of vacation bible school at the church where she works, which means I had to be the stand-in director and team leader for the week! Then there was the matter of finding a new staff person because Julia couldn't commit to the whole week. Luckily, we knew their camp was going to be small and therefore we could only have two small groups of kids and work in pairs, but we still had to figure out how to modify the schedule and decide who was going to lead what activities each day.

So we get there on Sunday for their volunteer meeting and guess who's there? The coordinators. That's it. No volunteers to be found anywhere. Apparently, this happened last year, too. Hmmm... So we ask them to call their volunteers to tell them to show up at 8:15 in the morning so that we can orient them before day camp starts; we unload our van; and then go over some details with them, such as the special visits from the fire and police departments, which is happening on Tuesday morning, right? Well, actually no, it's on Monday! (Ack! That means we have to revise Monday’s schedule and figure out how to combine our small group sessions and how to un-combine Tuesday's!)

But then 10:00 arrives on Monday morning and the firetruck doesn't. The coordinator calls the fire station, only to learn that surprise surprise they had us on the schedule for Tuesday, not Monday! And the police station? Same thing! So we're back to square one, except that we’re already partway into our revised schedule…so we just fill the time with games. On Wednesday, which is water day, 6 new kids show up and bring a whole lot more energy and distraction with them, and the sun goes into hiding. We survived the day, but thank goodness Thursday was back to normal! Except for the fact that a photographer from the newspaper showed up right in the middle of quiet time...she kindly waited and interviewed us until it was over and then got a picture of them playing with the parachute.

Besides being in charge of the staff and the schedule changes and the program and the music, and everything else, I was also trying to contact the office in New Jersey that I was supposed to be interviewing with for a JVC position. I finally reached them and had an "interview" during my lunch hour on Wednesday -- which was really me asking them questions, not the other way around.

I think I made it sound like kind of a horrible week, but it wasn't. Despite all of those little frustrations and surprises and challenges, it turned out to be a pretty nice week!

On Thursday evening, we drove back to Portland, picked up Gretchen in Milwaukee, and then proceeded to drop off Kat (at her doctor's office for an appointment she had forgotten about until that afternoon) and Mikie (at her friend's house), before heading to downtown Portland to meet Leah and Vickie for dinner! Yay!

On Friday, I got the call from New Jersey that they were offering me the job -- woot! But then we got a call from Kat, letting us know that she wasn't going to be able to be on staff the following week -- per her doctor's orders. Ack! So Gretchen and I spent the rest of the day trying to think of people who might be able to fill in at a moment's notice, because we knew we weren't going to be able to do Beaverton with only 3 staff members. We finally found someone who was interested and available (for the first 3 days...) at 8pm that evening. So that meant another new staff person to train, the last week of day camp...

I went to church with Gretchen on Sunday before we went to Beaverton, and lo and behold, guess who I ran into? My friend Katie, who I hadn't seen since April! Turns out her uncle goes to that church -- who knew? We were both in shock at seeing the other one there -- probably her more so than me.

Well, Beaverton came around and, well, no one showed up for their volunteer meeting, either. But they did all come in the morning like Gretchen requested, thank goodness, because it would have been a mess without that orientation, and it was a challenging enough day as it was. All but two of their shepherds were 18 or under, and only a few of them were really into the idea of giving the kids direction and telling them what to do, so pretty much everything started late that day. It got better as the week went on though. And it was really cool to have the diversity: most of the shepherds and a bunch of the kids were from a Korean Methodist congregation in Milwaukee.

The real adventure of the week though was when Kacy, our newest staff member, got sick halfway through the day on Monday (sound familiar?). Luckily this time we only had 3 small groups and so Mikie and Gretchen were able to fill in for her when they didn't have a group of kids in the afternoon. But it meant we had to rearrange our schedule for Tuesday... Then she called on Tuesday night and told us that she was going to come back for Wednesday. Kat's youngest brother also came to help out on Wednesday, which was a little bit random, but helpful, and we were glad to have in back on Thursday, too, since Kacy wasn't there. I felt sorry for the shepherds that week -- every single day had a different schedule!

When it was all over (oh, and don't forget the evening that Lisa Jean came over to our host home to evaluate the season with Gretchen and me), we packed the van, went home, and crashed. We finished our breakfast on Friday morning just in the nick of time before Julia arrived to do some debriefing with us. Mikie had had to leave for her sister's on Thursday evening and Kat was rafting, so it was just the three of us. It was good to see Julia one more time -- she is a jazz/folk musician who went to college with my aunt and knows both my parents very well, and I grew up listening to a lullaby album of hers... Then Gretchen and I spent the afternoon and evening sorting out the craft and supply bins and making inventory lists for them, and being goofy, and pretending to be upside-down cockroaches, and looking at each other's photos, and not going to bed until 12:30.

My parents came to get me on Saturday and we went berry-picking, and then Gretchen came with us to spend the night camping with us and we hiked to Bagby hot springs. On Sunday morning, we went our separate ways, and after a funeral in Corvallis in the afternoon, my parents and I headed out again for a night at the beach. When we got home Monday afternoon, it was time to say goodbye to summer vacation and start getting ready for the next big thing...