Camping It Up

So we´ve finally got around to adding something to our blog! It´s harder than you´d think to find the time to sit down and chronicle your life, busy as we are living it!

Caroline was the first off on June 2 2007, fresh as a daisy after a night at Wembley watching England play Brazil. As exciting as it is leaving a job you don´t really like and having two years of travel ahead of you, it´s a huge wrench to say goodbye to friends and family knowing so much will change in the time you´re away. So there were definitely a few tears shed at the airport and under the blanket on the plane, but the first sight of New York makes you think "ah, that´s what I´m here for". A couple of days in The Big Apple, reunited with Scatico friends John ´Rupert´ Hickey and Andi ´Buddy Tag´Arnold, and it was off to camp. It´s nice to return to a place year after year and have it feel like a second home. For those who don´t know, Scatico is a children´s summer camp located in the Hudson Valley about 100 miles north of NYC. It´s a gorgeous place with its own lake and over 200 acres of land. We sleep in wooden bunks in wooden beds and some of us (ie. Caroline) even get to share one shower between 18 people, but it´s a fantastic place to spend a summer.

Caroline was a Group Leader for the ´Debs´, the 12 year olds on Girls´ Side, and a great group they were! It was very strange to have two ex-campers on my team of counsellor staff, but they managed not to make me feel too old! When I wasn´t trying to get the girls to activities on time, get them out of bed in the morning and get them into bed at nights, I even managed to get some time off. Someone even let me drive an 8-seater giant Ford Explorer - I didn´t bother to tell them I´d never driven anything bigger than a Nissan Micra with manual transmission on the other side of the road...but somehow the car and I came away unscathed!

Obviously, even with the excitement of hikes, overnight camping and a pack of rampaging Canada geese, the summer wasn´t complete until Jim arrived. After a lost visa false alarm, a delayed flight and a missed train, we were reunited after 6 weeks apart, a bit like the Spice Girls but with less gingerness and peace signs. It didn´t take long for Jim to shoot off again though, leaving with the 16 year old Counsellors In Training (CITs) for Quebec, Canada. 12 days of white water rafting, horse riding , water parks, theme parks and Timmy Horton´s coffee, poor lamb. He managed to make it back unscathed, but Caroline will be forever scarred by the sight of Jim´s 12 day old beard. ´Vagrant´, ´hobo´and ´tramp´were a few of the more polite comparisons - ´Grizzly Adams´was about as complimentary as it got.

Luckily the beard was soon shaved off and the rest of summer went by smoothly. After the high-octane excitement of DJ Jeff night (a man who also possesses questionable facial hair), Girls´ Side and Boys´ Side were soon gripped by Color War fever. Color War is a huge 3 day competition where the campers are split into two teams - Green and Grey (Scatico colours). They compete in sporting and artistic activities winning points as they go. Caroline had the great honor of being chosen as a Color War Chief Judge, overseeing events, scheduling activities and getting confused by Olympic scoring. The winning team on Girls´Side is announced by way of lighting a giant greeny. Not the sort you might think - giant canvas and chicken wire letters where either G-R-E-E-N or G-R-E-Y are lit by a flaming torch. Gripping stuff indeed!

Of course, all good things must come to an end and August 14th rolled round as quickly as usual and our last days of the summer season were filled with packing, cleaning and the discovery of lost hairbrushes and underwear. We both had fun, games and sunburn and who knows, roll on summer 2009...?