My First Weekend

To catch some of you up to speed. Everyone at camp has a "camp name" mine is Chickadee because the Chickadee is the GREAT state of Massachusetts' state bird. REPRESENT! The male staff are Simba, Plato, Bug, and Chino (the cook). There is also the Director whose name is Grasshopper. The girls staff are Blizz, Poppy, Songbird, Mango, Raptor, and Sunset. The Directors wife is Muskrat. 

Now here is what I was up to this past weekend...also known as my first weekend at camp.

Friday morning campers left at 10 am. We (meaning the staff) starting cleaning the cabins and bunk houses. I then made my first trip into the "big city" of Salem, Oregon with some of the girls staff. Did I mention that I literally live on the side of a mountain. You can ask my dear 98 Oldsmobile Cutlass Olga about that curvaceous drive...her brakes are still aching, but at least I can't smell them anymore. We stopped at Walmart to get junk food to cram in the cabinets of the staff lounge. The camp meals are rationed, sugar free, and sometimes not enough. The car drive was filled of new advice for me and constant laughter about the memories we had all made with last weeks campers. I chimed in with my memories from the few days I had to spend with the campers. 

I went  to a church called Solid Rock in Portland Sunday morning. It was a cool Christian Church with a lot of good praise music. It is a very "come as you are" church in the fact that jeans were more then acceptable (which is good because that's what I was planning to wear for the day). After a stop at Chipotle (like Moe's) for lunch Simba, Plato, and I went to meet up with the rest of the group for bungee jumping. I have some video but the Internet isn't strong enough or has enough bandwidth to let me post the video. After bungee we went to a mall in Portland with an indoor ice rink. The food court overlooked the ice skating so you could see and smell the Cinnabun from the ice. lol...I went ice skating with Rice, a caregiver of one of the campers last week, and Mango, my roommate from Trinidad. Mango had never bungee jumped or ice skated so it was a great weekend for her. After that Rice, Mango, and I planned to use my $20 gift card to Olive Garden in Salem on the way back to camp. But Olive Garden being Olive Garden the wait was an hour, so we bounced to Red Robin which is kinda a burger joint and atmosphere like Friendlys (without the awesome ice cream). Next they had to show me Wynco which is a bulk store like BJ's or Costco. They didn't just have bulk items, everything was on discount like shampoo and books. They carry mostly everything but clothes.

Rice dropped us back to camp at 10 by curfew. We don't get campers until 2 tomorrow. From what I've been told Mondays consists of some last minute cleaning, and being assigned campers. Once we are assigned campers we must go through their files and list what kinds of food allergies/preferences/restrictions they have, and any other notable needs they might need throughout the week. We then share those with the other staff so they are aware of the needs of any campers they might come in contact with. It should be a good day...we get to sleep in till 8 :)