Take a shower, shine your shoes, you've got no time to lose

CAMP!

...was amazing. The campers were chatty and my group, not so good, but it was so fun being a skillbuilder. The other skillbuilders (camp counsellors, if you will) were perfect and I loved hanging out with them. We were completely insane, and I'm sure the kids were a little freaked out. Whenever we weren't doing a session with our groups, we would hang out in the corner, sitting on the extra tables that we'd piled high with our mattresses. We were the kings of the castle and it was a good time. Mr Hum kept walking past us and just shaking his head.

All day, the skillbuilders would do our thing, working in our groups, keeping the kids entertained and under control, making sure they didn't kill each other. After the kids went to bed, that was when the real fun started.

The camp happenned in this one big cabin. There was a main room, with the kitchen off it at one end and two bunk rooms at the other. Boys went in one room, girls in the other. The teachers slept upstairs in their rooms and the skillbuilders slept in the main room, outside the campers' rooms, on about a million mattresses, co-ed. Which was quite shocking in of itself, because usually at camp, the boys sleep with the boy campers and the girls get a skillbuilder cabin. But this year, Mr Hum didn't really care. In fact, nobody cared what the skillbuilders did. After the campers went to sleep, we'd stay up until all hours, having a camp fire, telling scary stories ("Just so you know guys, I will scream.") and generally having a good time. And then the next morning we'd all look like death and ask each other "Hey... Lina? Why was it a good idea to stay up until 3? WHY?".

Oh camp. How I miss you. Even though I was smelly and greasy and never got a second alone, I miss you so much. As Lina said when she signed on yesterday, "You know what sucks? SLEEPING ALONE."

*******

Best Camp moment: At camp, if you say something mean to someone, someone else can tell you to "Validate that!" and say something nice about the person. Here is a conversation between one of my campers and I:

Camper: Hey, Evey, what's that V word?

Evey: Umm... Vagina?

Camper: Uhhh... no. Validate! That's the one.

Evey: OH. Sorry.

Skilbuilder: This is the sad side-effect of Insight Theatre.