Hi y'all!

Only one week left of camp! This time next week I'll be getting on a bus and travelling out of camp and onwards on my travels, I can't believe how quickly this summer's gone. It feels as if I've been here for 6 months, not just 2 and a half. My assigned girls are the cutest, I've really grown attached to them. Each evening the 2 counsellors in their bunk do something called "Roses and Thorns" where they take it in turns to say the worst and best part of their day, and several times their Roses have been about me and my boating sessions :) Ooh yeah.

As before, all staff take part in the "Second Night Show" to welcome the campers into their new villages, standing up in our village groups and singing a chosen song which we've created our own lyrics to. That night, whad'ya know, there's another storm, causing each of us in our cabin to sit bolt upright at 4am upon hearing a huge crack just outside our cabin, and those in the top bunk to scramble into the lower bunks. I honestly thought a tree had crashed through out roof. The next morning amongst the debris we found the top half of a tree lying right beside our cabin, splintered straight down the middle where the lightning had struck it - scary stuff.

For our staff wreck that week, a casino night was organised for us in the dining hall, with a cup of chips given to us upon entry. The aim was to win as many chips as possible to be used to buy prizes in a "Tamarack auction" at the end of the night. Of course there was a load of underhand chip-stealing along the way, sucking up to the supervisors to get more chips out of them and working in groups to raise the most chips together, to be counted up at the end. Then the auction commenced. Prizes ranged from Tamarack merchandise, T-shirts, rugs, cups and glasses, to breakfast in bed, a period off, and the grand prize, lunch with the Camp Director, Lee. I managed to wangle my way into getting a T-shirt, it was pretty tough going though...

That Friday we were taken out to East Lansing for the International day off, Michigan's state capital. Michigan State University is a big part of the city, so after grabbing a burger in a university bar with the English horse-riding girls and desperately attempting to catch some of the Olympics opening ceremony on a tiny TV screen (baseball seemed to be the favoured channel grr), we all headed out to a Uni house party - one of the American lifeguards had friends at the university. (It's honestly just like in the movies, with streets lined with detached wooden-slatted frat houses!). I might just add here that the rivalry between Michigan State University in Lansing and Michigan University in Ann Arbor is MASSIVE - i.e. you would never dare admit that you were from the latter at this house party - you'd get a fist through your head. Except little ol' me who rocks up wearing a bright yellow Michigan University hoodie - let's just say it was a conversation starter! I played the "I'm just a little English girl, I don't know the American way…!" card a few times and they soon forgave me though J Woops. The next day was spent checking out the sprawling university campus (with hoodie in bag) before heading back to camp.

At camp, encounters with the wildlife are part of the deal. However, when during a canoeing session the following day with some 11-12 year old Levison village boys, they kept telling me about a mouse in their canoe, I was kinda sceptical. Asking how big its teeth were and whether it was gonna eat me, I played along with it throughout the hour session. Only 10 minutes before the end after they'd jumped out of their canoes to swim in and I went to tow their boat to shore did I notice a little whiskered face peering up at me from one of the end plaster boards, completely wedged into a hole at the top. I deservedly received a lot of "told you so's" afterwards, pretty hilarious. The boys' favourite game to play in canoes is definitely "The Bubble", when one boat is capsized so that it floats upside down in the water, and they take it in turns to swim under and into the air bubble so that they can breathe "underwater" - they love it. Boogie boarding has definitely become my favourite activity to instruct though, letting the kids mess around trying to fall off the craziest way, ride the waves from the water-ski boats and jet skis, or simply chill in the sun. Each activity at camp presents certain coloured beads as prizes for achieving certain skills in the periods, for example, boogie-boarding awards them for a 5 and 10 minute stand without falling, completing a 360 degree jump without falling, and the Macarena. And then there's the legendary "Super-cool bead". Awarded for a unique and crazy trick or skill that no-one has tried before, they are rarely awarded in sessions - which of course means that every kid tries in vain to come up with some new wacky idea each day. I awarded one to the cutest little 7 year old, Shelby, for doing a star-jump, headstand and somersault whilst singing the national anthem - impressive, right?

Like last session, the next day was Fox Fire, the American Carnival, with a slip-and-slide, pie-eating contests, and a marriage booth run by the camp Rabi, Eli, taking wedding ceremonies for the campers - I am now the proud wife of one of the lifeguards. Mazal Tov :) A gold rush was also organised whereby pebbles sprayed gold were scattered around camp for the campers to collect and trade in for gold tickets to purchase things at the booths, whilst dodging the bandits (aka staff) running around trying to steal them off them, mwahahaa.

Some days are themed, ranging from army days to neon days, and the next morning Harry Potter day was announced, with the camp's owl, Pat, brought down from the nature centre to act as Hedwig and the counsellors dressed up as wizards. It was also to be Circus Day, with the staff and kids all dressing up in crazy colours and running different booths, from bouncy castles and face painting, to diving for candy in trays of chocolate whip! Afterwards, a pool party was organised for the waterfront staff (as we always have to lifeguard for everyone else's and never get our own) before music dinner, with Disney songs played out of the dining hall speakers and everyone up on their chairs dancing. Each Wednesday everyone gets kibud too, Hebrew for candy, after the dinner prayer, whereby the Camp Director comes running into the hall dressed as a giant M & M (very funny) and does the "kibud shuffle", hopping rapidly from left to right with his arms outstretched, which everyone then gets up on their seats and copies. Everyone's then called outside to collect the chocolate or sweets as a treat.

The next day I signed up for an early morning staff ride, so we set off at 7am on a trail ride through the forest. All was going well before a deer suddenly appeared from the bushes next to us and one of the horses spooked, dragging one of the boys up a hill before he fell off! As I'm quite close to the horse-riding girls, they offered me a chance to go again during Menucha, camp's rest hour after lunch, with some more experienced people so that we could go further and faster. It's a pretty hairy ride cantering through the trees, dodging around bushes and trying not to get taken out by low hanging branches. Around 30 horses are leased out to the camp each summer from some guy that runs it as a business for American camps, but sadly some of them don't arrive in the best condition :( 1 has already had to be put down after it arrived lame. They all get pretty ratty around this time of camp, as they've been here since the beginning of June and are getting tired from all of the kids' bouncing around on their backs and pulling on their mouths.

The 3rd Aug was Shayna's last day at camp, the other American B & C girl working with me and one of my closest friends. She's leaving for the Israeli army in a couple of weeks and so was leaving camp to get prepared. After all of the sessions were over, the waterfront staff all gathered on the beach and presented her with a cake and huge handmade card that we'd all written goodbye messages in. She got pretty emotional understandably, and it's sad that I'm probably not going to be seeing her in the near future, what with a compulsory 2 years of living in Israel. I wrote her a letter to take home and read, and she had written one back which was really cute. I'll definitely be keeping in touch with her.

This International day off was a biggie; at the last minute camp decided to organise a trip to Cedar Point in Ohio, one of America's biggest theme parks with 14 roller-coasters. We were all on the bus by 6am to drive the 3 hour journey to the park situated on an island surrounded by vast lakes on all sides, with some rides hanging out above the water along the beach. It. Was. Awesome. Although my group decided not to fork out the extra $60 for a fast track ticket, we managed to get on at least 9 rides which was pretty good on a Saturday during vacation! And the rides were so much better than England's! There were roller-coasters where you stood the whole way, giant towers that propelled you up and down, the biggest steel roll-coaster in the world (aaargghh!), and the "Monster", the freakiest rollercoaster that carries you straight up into the sky, then drops the rest of the way to the ground - think Alton Towers' Oblivion x 10. AAAAARGHH! Even the trip back in the bus was eventful, with a heat storm following right at our backs and lightning striking streetlights beside us, cutting the power.

Once again, Midnight canoe was programmed that night, and I was chosen by my supervisor, to lead the session. We took the kids out into the night in glow-stick adorned canoes and told stories on the water, starting with me telling them in gory detail about my skydive that went wrong whilst travelling in New Zealand, earning me some horrified faces and a round of applause. On a spur of the moment idea, Ben and I decided to attach flame torches (with lots of tape!) to the front of our kayaks to lead the kids out onto the lake, which looked pretty epic (I felt like some kind of Viking chief), though it turned out that it made seeing straight in front of the flame almost impossible which is kinda awkward when trying to dodge the buoys and watch the kids! And the BUGS. On returning to the beach we made smores around the fire afterwards, joined by the Camp Director and Assistant Director who loved the programme we'd created. Felt kinda proud :)

The next day some of the waterfront girls decided to have a little waterski session during our rest period, where I managed to get up 3 times on the rope :) B & C were then booked in for a session at Teva that night, the camp's wildlife centre. We got to hold salamanders, turtles, baby mice (snake food, sadly), Californian Corn snakes, geckos, Pooki the 7 ft python, AND Rosie, the tarantula - yeeeah I did!

Once again, Israel Day came around, scheduled in the gym as sadly it was raining. I helped run the spa booth, giving kids facial massages using sun cream and cucumber, whilst Israeli music played and everyone danced around. One particular song, The Wobble, involves a set dance that everyone has randomly picked up around camp, so there was an pretty cool moment when everyone suddenly got into lines across the hall and began the dance all together, like the old Macarena days of school!

So here we are at today, a Friday, it's raining and thundering outside and I'm wrapped up in my sleeping bag writing this entry, whilst water drips steadily from the ceiling beside me through a crack in the ceiling into a bucket. Aaah gotta love camp life.

Love y'all, speak soon! x