Cambodian Heritage Camp 2007
The Angkor Dance Troupe performance at the opening ceremonies
Camp!
What a crazy weekend. So where to begin? Well first of all things didn't start out too well for us with regards to camp as we had about 5 counselors bail within 3 days of camp with only one of them giving any type of decent explanation. Not good I tell you. Things only got messier on Thursday when just about every counselor's flight was either delayed or canceled. The only people who were able to make it in on time were Roth, Nara and Seung. The LB counselors had their flight canceled and then rescheduled to arrive at around 2 pm. Sabrina missed her connection in JFK due to the weather and wound up being delayed until midnight after missing another flight in Cincinnati. The Houston girls were also delayed till 4:40 pm when their airplane was stuck in Louisiana somewhere due to some thunderstorms over Houston. And finally we thought we had lost Thanh when no one could get a hold of him after his flight was delayed out of Tampa as well. Oh and Thyda had missed her strandby flight in the morning so she had to catch the later USAIR flight out of PHX. Man what a mess!
The 2007 Cambodian Heritage Camp Counselors. Well almost all of them.
So we were hoping to get up to camp by 6 pm so that we could join in with the families for their pre-camp BBQ but that didn't happen with all of the delays. Matter of fact, we didn't get up there till about 9 pm only to find out that the cabin situation was a mess. It took almost 40 minutes to work that whole situation (we then had to revise it once again after our meeting) out before we were able to finally make it to the centralized cabin to start our counselor meeting. Which was eventually cut short btw because of how late it was and how tired everyone was.
Friday morning was still a mess but we finally caught up with things once lunch rolled around. Things were pretty much smooth after that with the exception of the the HS and MS kids being caught in a building due to a thunderstorm that rolled over the area right as they were supposed to go to their cooking class. Overall I'd have to say that camp was a success. It started off kind of rough but things definitely ran smoother after lunch on Friday.
The crowd gathering around the Chayyam Drummers during the Friday evening Water Festival.
Looking back at the previous camps I would have to say that there's one thing that stands out the most this year: how well the counselors bonded. In previous years everyone got along fairly well but there were still a few cliques here and there. It was never anything malicious but the goal for us this year was to break up all the cliques and get everyone on the same page socially. Well it worked. There were no Denver, Seattle, Cali, Houston or CSS cliques, it was just us camp counselors. I've never seen such "closeness" with the counselors in previous camps and it definitely showed with some of the pranks we pulled on each other. It also showed when it was time to say our goodbyes and even more prevalent when I had 17 people crashing out at my place on Sunday night waiting to catch their flight out the next morning.
Our "We Know What U Did Last Summer!" prank in the girls cabin
Oh and just in case you were wondering about our pranks. It wasn't quite all out war this year but the battle has begun as every cabin was plotting against every other cabin. My cabin started it on Friday night after I spent an hour telling ghost stories in the dark. Since everyone was then afraid of going to sleep we decide to prank the girls cabin by knocking on their windows and such. Turns out that didn't work so we snuck in through an unlocked door, turned over their furniture and with the help of a mole we wrote "We Know What U Did Last Summer!" in flaming hot cheetos. Hah things went up another notch on Saturday night but I won't get into that.
Anyways, camp this year was freaking great. It didn't start out as smoothly as we liked but we didn't really have any major problems. The games played this year at camp and after camp at my place were awesome too. And I think I can speak for everyone when I say *wink* "You're dead!" Can't wait to see you guys next year!!!