Hello! I’m Kiaya, a third year. This is my second time writing a blog for camp! So for camp I have to get up a bit earlier than everyone else because my daily task is setting up the lodge for breakfast. We got it done in 12 minutes which is already much faster than yesterday. After breakfast we have morning check in and meeting.
Not much here is mandatory: a couple things on arrival day, and day one. But for the rest of camp it’s basically just morning and evening meeting you have to go to the rest of the day is up to you.
During morning meeting they talk about the schedule, any special announcements, and people teaching workshops get to say a short piece about them. Afterwards we have advisee. I’m in Larkin’s advisee, with a group of other campers. It’s the third day so we also had to do COVID tests, thankfully everyone in my advisee was COVID free. Usually during advisee we do check ins about how we’re feeling and then some kind of activity for most days it’s just a simple game but sometimes it’s something a bit more creative.
I personally like going to the workshops. So for the first workshop after advisee, I went to a workshop about getting involved in local government, it was led by one of the staffers Margie. It was really informative and interesting to hear about her experience with the government and how she got her city to add more bus lanes. All the staffers are honestly really cool people, they all have such interesting life experiences, and ongoing projects. A lot workshops they lead are I find very impactful.
The merch table for picking up camp t-shirts and jackets was also during lunch today, super exciting to see what color it was this year. The Culminatior hoodies are also a different color each year so I’m really curious what the hoodie they’ll get at the end of the session is.
The next workshop I went to was a staff workshop. i went to Milla’s intro to partner dance, I’ve gone to all their dance workshops each year and every time it’s been really fun. In the last few years it was set up a bit differently but this year we went over almost everything from last year in one workshop so I’m curious to know what’ll happen in their next one.
Then it’s dinner and evening meeting, usually evening meeting has a few staff announcements but is mostly about camper announcements and complaints, we also have a couple short games/traditions that happen then. During evening meeting we learned that there was someone who tested positive, it was really faint but now their masking and keeping a large distance from anyone. The campers have all been really nice, offering to get them food and hanging out with them outside their tent. We had a similar situation last year and everyone did a really good job of keeping it to just the one confirmed person. So i think it’ll be fine.
After evening meeting we had bonding night, I don’t think I’m going to write much on this. It’s a pretty special experience and I don’t think there’s much I could write to describe it fully.
Then tonight there was a meteor shower, it peaks better tomorrow but it might be cloudy tomorrow night. We have some really beautiful night skies here so I hung out with some other campers to watch it, it was a really cool thing to see. Camp is pretty lucky to usually take place during the Perseids shower I love getting to see it each year.
Camp is such a unique place, with different people every year making each session a completely different experience but still a fun one. I’m excited to see what the rest of camp will be.
Kiaya, camper