Week Three/Four

16 July Providence..

i had actually not want to go up to Providence since last weekend, we went up to see waterfire & we did go into the Mall to get a drink while waiting for Don to return from the hospital to pick us up & bring us to his house.. but i guess the ‘evil’ side took the better of me & i went up together with 7 other international staff.. we picked up Neil (an American staff) on the way and spent the entire afternoon there, all the way until night when the shops were closed..

dinner was a packet of fried rice.. together with ‘leftover’ meat Odette had for dinner.. anyway, i caught a movie before that!! Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. yay! it’s been a long time since i watched one so i was pretty happy. =) cool show. it’s $6.75 everyday before 6pm (even on weekends!) so it was a pretty good deal. Neil had a friend working at the cinemas so they went in for a free (but short – Shark 3) show later after dinner, which i chose to give it a pass so i could go to this café across the street for internet connections but.. the café was closed!! for good i think.. boo.. =( so off i went to this place which sold clothes cheaply (apparently) called Old Navy to look for the rest of the girls who went there to shop. all in all, i got a few stuff: a pair of shoes, a nice pinkish halter blouse (with a small butterfly in the middle), some tees for gifts for friends & a pair of three-quarter pants.. okok, spent quite some money since yesterday was pay day.. i still have enough to last me for the rest of summer & also for the Boston trip (as well as other weekend trips). saving up in case i can stop over in Seattle & Taipei on my way back to Singapore. haven’t been able to get to the airlines from here. no time to call during the days mon-fri & i think the office’s only open on saturdays during the weekends.. so i’ve gotten Lionel to call my travel agent back home to check it out for me.. hopefully i will get an answer soon! getting abit worried because i need to be home by 3 Sept since fan-jie’s wedding on the 4th..

17 July Weekend coming to an end.. again. =p

well, that’s usual. time flies really quickly.. especially when you least expect it to.. like the days from Mondays to Fridays usually drag but when the weekends come, it disappear so fast it just seemed like yesterday when the kids were here. bleah.. had a good 9 hour sleep last night. i think i can still do with more.. it’s just so tiring throughout the week.. many times just longing to hit the bed asap so that my body can get its full rest & get ready for the next challenging day.. life is ‘hard’ here.. you practically work 24 hours (sleeping with the kids who wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom is why i consider it 24 hours.. =( sigh..)

was woken up by sung hye this morning to ask if i was going for breakfast.. which i didn’t go (don’t worry, I took brunch. cereals). but i didn’t sleep in after she left either. got up to shift my stuff over to another shelter (i’ve been @ 4 different shelters already..) moving each weekend becomes more challenging as I buy more stuff to ‘add’ to my already lots ‘collection’. spent some time packing up a little then carrying the stuff over. went over to Pond (our washing & drying place) to pick up my dried laundry then took a shower. i didn’t bathe last night (we reached camp about 1030pm) because I was so exhausted, i just cleaned up, washed my feet & sleep. hadn’t had time to unpack the stuff i bought.. shall look into it during my break time this week.. i’m in day-camp this week again but they’ve shifted our hour-break to the hour after dinner – which means 7-8pm. it’ll be more tiring since our day starts off earlier on most days (7am – staff prayer; 715am – breakfast; 750am – AM care & van run, which the day camp staffs take turn to do every morning) & we’ve the largest group of resident campers this week, not to mention, ACA (America Camping Association) visits to check & inspect on different aspects of camp.. =( bleah..

made some new friends today – i missed church because i tu (took my own time) too long.. sung hye, myung hoon & rosendo were looking for me but somehow couldn’t find me (don’t ask me why) so i took the guitar & had some worship time myself. did my daily devotions for today & tomorrow & read through all the bible study materials I needed for the week. *smiles* it was great! in fact, when i went over to Meadowwoods for brunch, i met this lovely old lady (Opal) who was ‘struggling’ with her stuff.. some boxes & luggage so i helped carry them in. in ‘return’, i asked if she could drive me to the nearby Wal-mart & she did! since she had to buy a torch (or they call it flashlight here). got sung hye one as well) it came together with batteries for 90cents! she nearly turned into incoming traffic (now, i thought only i had that chance of doing so since we usually turn into the ‘other side’ of the road..) but all’s safe & fine. got some cereals (coco pops) & peanut butter biscuits (day-camp’s packed lunch aint nice every time so it’s just in case.. =p) got to know some of Opal’s friends (all nice old folks). i promised to write to her when i got back to Singapore.. probably be writing even when i’m here.

19 July Camp Wightman, Connecticut

we were supposed to go to camp Wightman (that’s our sister camp in Connecticut – a good 45mins’ drive away. yay, another visit to a anothe state!) on Monday night but we didn’t have spray paint so Kailyn got Tom (our maintenance guy) to pass her the paint & hence, we set off on Tuesday night after junior high activity (which was making milkshake for everyone in a huge bucket –the size of a trash bin – running the motor with the batteries in our camp van!). there’s a tradition here where my camp (Canonicus) & camp Wightman have this ‘friendly competition’. we would do things to ‘sabotage’ each other.. cant remember all the things that happened in the past (probably too much to blog here too) but yep, we got the ‘ball rolling’ this summer by sending ‘Camper Bob’ (he’s actually made of straws & hay) there.. in rebuttal, they sent a broken piano with a note saying they had a hard time getting camper bob away from the piano (hence, it’s spoilt) and that he needed fresh underwear.. so our aim was to get ‘new clothes’ to him as well as fresh underwear. The spray paint? well, that was our nice surprise for them..

we drove up (Andrew drove Kailyn, Cailin, Sara & me – Sarah.. yes.. we named it ‘operation double trouble’ for obvious reasons.. =p ) & just as we turned off our car headlights, we saw a car pass us on the other side of the road..we panicked alittle, thinking they might have caught us (oh no!!). everyone ducked (which was silly now thinking of it – the car was a BIG thing that everyone can see loh..) but hey, i just said, stop stepping on the brake.. & the brake lights went out. =p phew.. they didn’t stop. nice. so off we went walking into their campsite.. careful especially when we walked past their village (places where the campers slept). found the one & only field they had & heh, sprayed our camp logo & the words ‘camp canonicus welcomes you! =p’ yes, including the smiley face.. hahah.. took a couple of photos (in andrew’s camera) then made our way to their dining hall where we would locate their flag pole. hmm, the American flag was still up there (apparently it’s not the first time they forget to lower their flag) so we took it down & got our nice bright yellow spongebob underpants (which was huge!) up. their dining hall was just beside retreat houses & apparently, someone actually looked out of the window & saw Kailyn! (she said she made eye-contact) but phew, the person didn’t come out. just turned off the lights.. hahha.. =) luck was on our side! tried to find Camper Bob but we didn’t manage to. Wanted to ‘break in’ to their dining hall but thought otherwise when we saw a glass display cupboard just outside the door leading to the dining hall.. & guess what? we could insert stuff from the back of the display cupboard just by moving the cupboard forward, enough for our hands to reach back.. left Camper Bob his newly washed tshirt & a note. =p but.. we spotted someone! immediately everyone ducked! hahah.. it was pretty funny.. because we later realized he was walking away from us! but well, safety ‘precautions’ i guess.. =p made our way out.. this time walking ‘normally’, pretending to be ‘staff’.. you know, sometimes we’d have people on petrol at night..

passed by the welcome sign at the entrance.. it was a whiteboard & we had a whiteboard marker i borrowed so we could write the note to Camper Bob in the car.. the rest stayed in the car while i went back to the sign to erase their “Welcome to Camp Wightman” & replace it with “Welcome to Camp Canonicus =p” it was a full moon & it really was pretty bright. didn’t even use the torch (they call it flashlight here.. the campers have no idea what i mean when i said torch! they just give me the puzzled look..) once. i was mentally prepared to ‘jump’ into the bushes should i come into contact with anyone/car, hopefully with me spotting them or the car first.. but heh, didn’t need to. made it to the
car safe & sound! =p was just wondering what if they caught us red-handed..

22 July Busy Busy Week

whoo.. what a tiring & busy week i had. only managed to sleep about approx. 5-6 hours every night.. it’s amazing how i had enough strength to last for the following day especially when i had to deal with 2 russian boys in my group.. the older one (Maksim, Max for short) was supposed to be in little cailin’s group but somehow he was overwhelmed by the number of older kids in his group (10 i think) & ended up in my group with his ‘brother’ (they’re both separate orphans being adopted by this American family) after crying.. poor him. stressed out by the guys in his group.. by the way, the younger & cute russian boy’s name is Boris. Hahah.. the way everyone pronounced it last week, i really thought it was Forrest.

it’s the weekends once again. i had absolutely no time to sit down & rest at all this week! ACA (American Camping Association) was here for inspection & there were so many things that we had to do.. to cater for them & also for the largest group of campers we’ve had so far this summer.. 80 campers. add 20+ staff, that’s like 100+ every meal.. it isn’t the largest in camp history but it’s been a hectic week with 2 counselors down.. my South Korean guy friend is still sick & has just left for New York with his cousin (& 2 other relatives) for rest, family & ‘better’ medical treatment (they’ve sent him in to the A&E at 2 nearby hospitals but so far no doctors could diagnose what’s wrong.. =( poor him. constant headache..) i only managed to visit him once last night.. just too busy plus i was evening co-counselor with junior high plus camp (they did an hour of activities at night when the rest of camp has gone to bed =( so i was really max-ed out)

23 July Boston! =)

Ok, so i finally got to visit the famous Boston.. all year round i’ve always heard about this place & seen pictures of it & yay, i get to see it in person.. well, i didn’t manage to visit MIT but sung hye & me enjoyed ourselves taking loads of photos in Harvard (we took the express T – that’s the name of the subway – that dropped us there..) while the rest of the international staff (plus Kailyn & Don) explored the shops around.. they were looking for some vintage shop that sold 60’s and 70’s clothes which had a used-clothes section.. but it was closed when they got there.. will upload the photos when i can.. =)

Don arrived late in the morning (as usual).. hence us leaving almost an hour later than planned. the station we parked the camp van at didn’t have enough 1-day-passes for all of us (there were 11 of us in total) so they asked us to go to another station to purchase them. government centre. so off we went.. the need to change to another colour line from where we were (shall not bother telling you the colours.. =p) but.. they didn’t have enough for the remaining 3 of us! man, the system does seem, hmm.. somewhat inefficient.. guess on the whole, it seems easier to find our way around as compared to the system in New York (which was very messy and dirty – yucks!) got to go the Aquarium FOC (free of charge) because Kailyn had a friend who has a membership card for 3 free entries per day.. of course it took us some time to get everyone in (Traciann & Betim went to the Museum of Fine Arts instead though) – smuggle. =p it was pretty. the penguins were cute.. & we managed to catch the keepers feeding them.. i even took a short video of it! sung hye & I settled lunch before we went in because we were hungry but the rest decided they wanna eat after.. they were ‘dying’ of hunger by the time we left about a quarter to 4. hahha.. oh & i bought a red lobster soft toy!! it’s very cute! hee.. =)

again, being in a large group for an outing.. it takes time to wait for everyone to be ready to go & also for consensus when heading to a place.. in particular, they had a hard time deciding where they wanted to eat.. sung hye & i already had our fill & we decided that the restaurant they were going to was too posh & expensive so we decided to give it a miss.. headed off to shop.. @ the supermarket lah.. bought cereals. yay! yummy!! hee. i’m assigned resident camp this week though, so i’m not sure if i’ll be able to eat my cereals.. =( sobz. (day camp staff eat breakfast before the whole camp when they have AM care or van runs which was everyday for me the week. mon: all staff at day camp registration; tue & thu: AM care; wed & fri: van run.. all volunteered but then again, we only had 4 day camp staff this week & AM care needs 2 counselors there.. so..)

the best thing of the whole trip was that Don locked the keys of the van in the van.. sigh. had to wait around in the car park for his tow-truck guy to come unlock the van & get the keys.. there we go, first time sitting on the floor of a big carpark.. how often does that happen? next, Don took us on the wrong direction on the highway.. we headed north towards Canada instead of south to Rhode Island.. so when we realized, we got off to try to turn around.. landed up in jail. literally.. haha.. the turn we took brought us to Norfolk Prisons. hahha.. think the officers must be wondering what-the-heck is a camp van doing in its compound.. got back on & headed to jamie’s house.. i was going to spend the night here (hence the internet connection). think i made some of the folks mad because Don had gotten lost twice & it was already running very late. most of us are very, very tired & wanna sleep. i don’t blame them. i am very tired too..

ok, really late. i should hit the bed liaoz.. catch you guys next weekend.. =)