Camps for Champs

That's what I was doing all week. I think this was the sixteenth summer in a row that our church has run Camps for Champs. They're sports day camps for kids in the community, and for the last couple of years they've been run by a Camp Director (which is a summer job, generally for a college student or graduate) a couple of adult coaches, and whatever crazy youth happen to be up for helping out.

So I was a crazy youth. And the week was definitely crazy. I think the utter craziness of it can be summed up by saying that the camp, which was soccer this week, was 3/4 boys and 1/4 girls. The noise was amazing. It's truly astounding how much noise a group of 35 kids can make when they're not even trying.

My last five days looked like this:
8:05 am - Leave the house. This was because Grace had to be somewhere at 8:15 and though Ben and I didn't need to be at the church until 8:45, there was no point in driving Grace and driving back. Anyway, this was my first experience with having to consistently be up early and out of the house and organized with a lunch and etc. I don't think I'd like to do that for school all year. Thursday morning I woke up AT 8:15 to find that I needed to be in the car in fifteen minutes, in which time I needed to get dressed and pack a lunch and collect whatever paraphernalia I needed for camp. Not fun.
8:45 am - Meet with Hayley (the director) and pray with the other coaches/helpers before starting camp. Usually by this time a couple campers had already arrived.
9:00 am - Camp for the day officially starts. Mostly we played a game until everyone had arrived, such as the infamous titles The Animal Whacking Game (only without the animals) and I Have Never. That one was fun.
about 9:15 am - We head over to the fields, a five-minute walk, to start soccer for the day. We played in older and younger groups, from about ages 5 to 8, and then ages 9 to 11, and throughout the week we did different drills. Thursday morning we did play a game, coaches on campers, and I discovered that when it comes to sports, I am truly more of a liability than an asset. It's a victory if I kick the ball in the right direction. Oh well.
12:00 pm - Lunch. It was interesting, packing a lunch. Forgive me for ruminating on something you probably all do so much that it's second nature, but I don't actually think I eat like that at home. Little packets and plastic-wrapped sandwiches and stuff.
12:30 - Afternoon activity. That or Kidmo. We'll call it afternoon activity, but they switched back and forth. The first day, this was something I can't even recall, but the second and third days, two groups went swimming and two did a scavenger hunt and some paper mache. The fourth day...I must have left bits of my memory somewhere because I can't remember this either...and the fifth day we played mini olympics. Three-legged race, tug-of-war, water balloon toss, the lot.
2:00 - Kidmo. This was about half an hour of video, in which the campers learned a verse and had some teaching, as well as Quizmo, which was worth points. Points were tallied at the end of the week and the winning team got a prize. Theoretically. Actually I think everyone got the same prize at the end. Anyway, then we did little activity booklets and made WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets.
3:00 - End activity. This was sometimes a game, sometimes something like painting our paper mache, and the last day we made ice cream with ziploc bags and much ice, shaken for a long time. A LONG time.
3:30 - The kids go home and the coaches and helpers collapse and listen to Hayley talk for a minute before she takes pity on us and sends us home too.

So that was a fun week, if a really (REALLY REALLY REALLY) tiring one. Some cute moments include:

[One of the little boys, after the coaches won the soccer game] "Congratulations, you guys won. Good job. Cause it doesn't matter who won as long as we all had fun!" <--The complete sincerity of this one was a bit awwwww.

"How old do you think she is? Take a guess."
"Ummm...going into grade 10?"
[cue indignant noise from me]
"And how old am I?"
"I think you're in your first year of college."
[cue more indignation from Melda, as I don't understand how I look as though I'm just going into high school while Tyler is college-age]

[This was one of the little boys who completely ignored me until...]
"Coach! Coach! I saw you in the swimming pool with a pink swimsuit!" <--Okay, he was about nine, and I think he had a minor crush on me all week.

And next week I head off on vacation. W00t!

Melda