And she's back!
I got home yesterday at about 5:20 PM, after helping to unload the truck carrying all our camp borrowings from one of the director's schools. I did a little bit around the house, including attempting to check my mail...only to find that for the third year in a row, AOL is screwed up. Oh, goody. Then, against my better judgment, I joined the Illinois counselors at a pizza place for food and more fun, then went back to one counselor's house for swimming, watching the Olympics, and listening to this crazy CD by a guy named Richard Cheese--it's totally wacky but we all cracked up. This was against my better judgment because I was sleep-deprived (I got about three hours' sleep Friday night/Saturday morning)--camp just plain means sleep deprivation. I was falling asleep on the way there, I was falling asleep at the pizza place (hard to do in a group of 30 people, but I managed), I was fine at the guy's house and definitely in the pool, but once I left the pool after being in it for a good 2.5 hours, it hit me that I was exhausted and very much struggled to stay awake on the ride home at 1:30 this morning. I should have taken up the guy's offer to spend the night, but camp leaves me with a...shall we say, funny feeling in the tummy, and I did not wish to make the night unpleasant for all involved.
Camp in and of itself was okay. The really horrible part was the weather. To sum up: It was FRICK-ASS COLD. Yes, that would be the exact term that kept popping up in my head all week. The camp is in Porter County, Indiana, maybe 20 miles south of Lake Michigan. We've had years at camp where it was 100F (the year my cousin was born...she can get her driver's license in 5 whole days). The past two years it was absolutely beautiful. This year we had two days of beautiful weather, and then it became October. When it's the middle of the day in August and you can see your breath, something's wrong. At least it got nice again by Friday afternoon, so our annual Friday night beach party was okay and our outdoor concert was fine. This was a band camp, and I'm one of the senior counselors, and even though I was the band director for most of these kids for half a year, I didn't direct; I still got to play in band. A portion of the older kids had seen me at camp before, but the little ones were all excited and asked me what instrument I played, and what's that little black instrument? It was my wooden piccolo--"Wow! It's made of wood? How do you play it?" they'd ask. I couldn't go in the dorms at night because I'd be greeted with a chorus of children yelling my formal name (Miss "Chase") and they wouldn't go to bed! It was nice this year to know most of the kids, and of the ones I didn't know I did learn some names.
I'll probably share some more stories in the coming days, but I'll have to get some of my pictures back before I remember some of them. I took nine rolls of film this year.
Camp in and of itself was okay. The really horrible part was the weather. To sum up: It was FRICK-ASS COLD. Yes, that would be the exact term that kept popping up in my head all week. The camp is in Porter County, Indiana, maybe 20 miles south of Lake Michigan. We've had years at camp where it was 100F (the year my cousin was born...she can get her driver's license in 5 whole days). The past two years it was absolutely beautiful. This year we had two days of beautiful weather, and then it became October. When it's the middle of the day in August and you can see your breath, something's wrong. At least it got nice again by Friday afternoon, so our annual Friday night beach party was okay and our outdoor concert was fine. This was a band camp, and I'm one of the senior counselors, and even though I was the band director for most of these kids for half a year, I didn't direct; I still got to play in band. A portion of the older kids had seen me at camp before, but the little ones were all excited and asked me what instrument I played, and what's that little black instrument? It was my wooden piccolo--"Wow! It's made of wood? How do you play it?" they'd ask. I couldn't go in the dorms at night because I'd be greeted with a chorus of children yelling my formal name (Miss "Chase") and they wouldn't go to bed! It was nice this year to know most of the kids, and of the ones I didn't know I did learn some names.
I'll probably share some more stories in the coming days, but I'll have to get some of my pictures back before I remember some of them. I took nine rolls of film this year.