Yes, Yes, We Know it.... Happy Birthday!

I arrived home from Rome two days before I was set to start seven weeks in a row of camp with Berlitz, and spent most of that time crying on Lisa´s shoulder. Rome, obviously, hadn´t turned out as I expected; I was devastated and didn´t know whether to try again with Steve in September or whether I should end it now. Lisa´s vote was for ending it now, because of how hurt and unhappy I was, but I had to come to my own conclusion about that. The night I got back she convinced me to go out dancing with her, and I was so glad I did because I finally saw Bucovina club (the DJ we slept through when I got back from Edinburgh) and dancing really cheered me up and got my mind off Steve. On the night of Saturday, July 7th, as the fireworks from LiveAid Hamburg were colouring the sky with money, I left on an overnight train to Frankfurt am Main. Destination: Grävenwiesbach, a tiny village in a valley in the Taunus mountain range near Frankfurt.
My arrival was rather eventful. At 7am I had to change trains and because I was tired and my German isn´t so flash to begin with, I missed the announcement saying my train wouldn´t make the connection with the third train I had to take... so I ended up taking a taxi. The driver was really cool and we had a conversation (in German, woohoo!) about the recent Deutsches Bahn riots: apparently the day before I arrived, all the S-Bahns in Frankfurt had stopped for protesters, some of whom had strapped themselves to trains. I couldn´t exactly make out why, but we both agreed this was completely crazy.

When I arrived, I was stunned by the location. The Youth Hostel was nestled in the woods by a stream, with a meadow across the way and ropes courses hanging from the trees! It was beautiful and I could tell the kids were just going to love the courses. I met the camp director, Jon, and put my bags down to have breakfast with Jon and Jabu, one of the counsellors I´d done my training with in Hannover. I tried my best to make conversation but I was tired from my overnight train and feeling quite unhappy and distracted over Rome and Steve, so my efforts weren´t really up to par. To be perfectly honest, I wanted to be doing anything BUT being a perky, happy, leader and teacher who encourages kids and supports her teammates. That just sounded like hell to me. But it´s not like I had much of a choice at that point! I was just glad Jabu was there, because I remembered what a positive, calm, and supportive person he was during our training in Hannover.
I quickly learned I had another reason to be worried about this camp: the director, Jon, was a first-time camp director and although he seemed to be great with planning, organizing, and doing the paperwork side of things (of which there is a LOT), his people skills were sadly lacking. Through the week he said a lot of really nasty and undeserved things to me, and the comments were directed only at me. It was as if he was taking out his stress and frustrations of being a first-time camp director on me, because two of the other counselors were incredibly experienced, and the third was a man he found attractive and who seemed so competent you couldn´t argue with him. Which left me, the small blonde who was already feeling low on self-confidence because of Steve and Rome. I guess it seemed easy for him to pick on me, espescially because at the beginning I wasn´t my usual peppy, enthusiastic leader-self.

The first week there I shared a room with a girl named Katey, who was awesomely supportive and energetic, and who had loads of experience. She was so lovely to work with because I was able to share with her the things that Jon was saying, and since I wasn´t 100% sure that what Jon was telling me wasn´t correct, she was able to set the story straight. I also shared my feelings about Steve with her when she walked into our room on Sunday night, right after I had called Steve to end things and he had hung up on me. She was just so great and we got along awesomely... I hope I can visit her in Berlin!
Even though I was receiving the worst treatment and I felt down, most of my memories of Grävenwiesbach are good ones. One evening, campfire night, each of the classes "performed" a song or skit at the campfire, and my class did "Where´d you get those socks?!", a camp favourite from my Webbs days which Monica kindly sent me the lyrics for. Everyone had a good time laughing as we made fun of the smelly socks of the counselors and the siblings of the kids in my class. Awesome. To top off the night, Captain Dave (a Berlitz legend because he´s done over 80 camps and he has the most impressive energy with the kids, ever) did a version of "Grease Lightning" with his class, which they retitled, "Go Berlitz Camps". Totally cheesy, totally cool, and afterwards all the kids were in a fantastic mood! We walked back to camp blaring Grease Lightning on portable speakers, and this one little girl who´d been horribly homesick that week was rockin´ out and having a great time. When we got back, we kept the Grease soundtrack going and Katey, Dave, and I used water bottles as mics and made general fools of ourselves singing Karaoke. Me and Dave even did a duet of "Summer Lovin´"! Dave calls it, "one of those moments where the counselors ignore the kids and have a ridiculously good time being silly." I totally agree, and find it funny how being 12 and growing up in an English speaking country means you know all the lyrics for the major songs in Grease. Weird. The kids found it so funny they filmed us with their mobile phones; I wish I had a copy!
I also had an awesome time on excursion day. We took a bus to a big pool in a different town, and I found the countryside around Grävenwiesbach really beautiful. The pool was super fun; we got to run around with the kids and play on the slide and hang out in the hot tub. A great day, and fairly easy and low-key for the counselors! There were also lots of great nights where we drank "counselor juice" (or "reebs" or "shakesbeer") till the wee hours of the morning, laughing and hanging out and bonding as a team. Totally lovely. Those were the best because after Jon went to bed, Dave, Katey, and Jabu were really encouraging and supportive of me and the problems I was having with Jon. On the last night of the first week, they apologized for not saying something about his people skills to him sooner (they had noticed the lack as well) and promised to write some emails to Laurie, the woman who coordinates the teams. They also encouraged me to try to change camps for my third week, since I was meant to be with Jon for three weeks in a row! Originally, Laurie had scheduled me with Freia, because we´d gotten along so well in Norderney, but her grandmother was very ill two weeks before camps started so Laurie had to ask Jon to take her place. So it was with quite a lot of dread that I watched Katey and Dave, my advocates and co-conspirators, leave the camp at the end of the week, knowing I had two more weeks of Jon to handle all by myself.

Luckily, the second week didn´t go as badly (in Jon-terms) as the first week did. Katey and Dave were replaced by a first-time counselor named Suki, who was a sweetheart, and by a guy named Aaron from Florida who was going to be a camp director later in the summer. Suki really doubted herself and was super nervous and highstrung about her own performance as a teacher and counselor, so I was very relieved when Jon seemed to "leave her alone" as far as his treatment towards me went. Anyways, Suki was going through an interesting time in her life so we talked a lot about her recent discovery that she doesn´t think monogamy is possible, and even if it is she´s not sure she wants to be a part of that. Pretty cool to figure all that out! Aaron was a nutcase, hilarious to be around and really easygoing. Neither I nor Jabu (who also stuck around for a second week in a row) said anything about Jon at the beginning, we just let Suki and Aaron come to their own conclusions... and it didn´t take them very long to discover what we already knew. Unfortunately. Fortunately, neither of them got the treatment I did and both of them had very positive outlooks and good sense of humour, so we managed really well as a team. As with the first week, I found it so interesting how everything functioned just find when the counselors all got along, because we just stuck up for each other and got the job done as well as if we´d had a star camp director.

A few of the kids stayed for two weeks, and unluckily for us they were the troublemakers in the first week. They were five: two sets of brothers and one of their friends. One set of brothers was very energetic and egotistic but very funny and sweet kids, and the other set of brothers had horrible attitude problems from their Dad, but were basically good kids underneath. Jabu noted (correctly) at the beginning of the second week that if we didn´t keep a sharper eye on them to keep them in line, we were going to have major problems by the end of the week. In fact, partway through the week, Jabu had to stop some fisticuffs between the two oldest boys! Jon promptly called their parents, although Jabu had basically resolved the whole thing and was even going to do some conflict management later on. It was best coming from him, too, because as far as the kids were concerned Jabu was the coolest human being on the planet, and they didn´t respect Jon at all. In fact, at the end of the first week one of the older kids was caught writing a mock-note at the disco which read, "Dear UN Secretary-General for Children, please make sure Jon never works with kids again". Thank goodness one of the counselors saw him writing it and prevented him from putting it where someone else could read it... it was bad enough as it was! But on the other hand, if the kids disliked him enough to write that, then maybe he should´ve seen it.... maybe it would´ve been a slap for him to pull up his socks in the way he dealt with people.

I´d taught the teenagers in the first week and found it RIDICULOUSLY tough, so in the second week I took the second-youngest group. I started out with two of the boys from the first week, but quickly realized they were far above my class' level. With this group I quickly discovered that using hangman as a reward for good class behaviour was a GREAT idea! And they were quite well-behaved... the only problem was, because of the way Jon was treating me, the kids didn´t see me as an authority figure and often didn´t take me seriously. But I did the best I could; and the biggest problem was that I didn´t like a couple of the most participative kids in my class! They were two little girls who barely ate at meals, were terribly concerned with looking good, and often made fun of the other kids. They reminded me of being 10 and having the other kids in my class make fun of me; I didn´t like the memories they brought back OR the way they treated the other kids, but that is the kind of behaviour we (as counselors) can´t do much about. It´s based on personality traits and many years of observing family members (older sisters, mother, whatever), so that they think it´s how a girl should behave. What we ended up doing was making them apologize to the kids they were insulting (but only if we recieved a complaint from the kids or saw the insult ourselves) and encouraging them during meals and sports to eat and exercise.... otherwise they would´ve had only one slice of bread and sat out during sports. It was a bit sickening, actually, and definitely upsetting. We even got some of the older girls in on it: the "camp hottie" Mona ate like a normal person and encouraged them to do the same.... that seemed to help a bit more than the counselors doing the same.

In the second week, the weather was good and my courage was up so I decided to try one of the ropes courses! I´m not sure what it was called, but basically you go zipping across a huge space on a rope, as if you were flying! I got all the gear on (full-body harness and helmet) and climbed up the big tree towards a platform that I would be expected to jump off of; meanwhile, the kids were chanting my name so I sang a few lines of "O Canada" for them (I´d taught a few classes the words that week) and they laughed. I got to the top and looked down.... oh man. I´m not SO scared of heights, but it was still a long way down! The instructor helped me tighten all my gear and then showed me how I would be attached to the zip-rope: one huge rope which could lift a VW car was attached to three smaller ropes that attached to my harness. Even though she showed them to me (as she showed them to everyone), sitting down with my legs hanging off the platform was the scariest part of the whole experience. The kids started chanting "jump, jump, jump!" ...and so I did, with a scream I´m sure they heard in Frankfurt! I yelled the whole way across the rope and was grinning like a fool as my momentum slowed and carried me back to where the kids were waiting to help me get down. It was so exhilirating; such a rush! I was flying through the trees with the greatest of ease! I wanted to do it again! But other kids had to go, and so as the kids grapped the rope to lift me up, I unclasped myself from the giant VW rope and they lowered me down. I had a much better experience than one of the other kids, who had a disability, and was so shaken by the whole thing that he was unable to unhook himself because he was shaking and weak. He was up there for at least ten minutes as we all tugged on the rope to life him higher, and eventually one of the rope instructors had to run over and coach him through it. He was smiling when he came down and didn´t want to go inside, but we had him sit in the shade and drink water as the instructor explained to everyone what "shock" was. It was quite serious and everyone was very encouraging and careful after that.

Well, when I left Canada I was trying to figure out how I would spend my birthday: maybe lounging on a Greek beach, maybe exploring Amsterdam, maybe relaxing a spa-like public bath in Budapest..... but in fact, I spent my birthday here in Grävenwiesbach, a little youth hostel in the middle of nowhere, Germany. The day of my birthday started with an incredible downpour, as if Vancouver had come halfway across the world to sing Happy Birthday in its water-logged voice. I wore my lovely sundress anyways, just as I´d planned, and as I was walking to breakfast checking out how everyone was missing I realized they´d all gathered in the meal room to celebrate me.... so I opened the door and there was the whole camp. They sang "Happy Birthday" and then "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean", as I laughed and clapped... and then the kids got fake bubbly with their breakfast, and the counselors ate a lovely cake (made by Aaron and Jon, surprisingly!) and drank Mimosas. It was incredibly decadent! I also got a card from the counselors, with little caricatures of the counselors drawn by Aaron, and each one said an inside joke: Jabu, "Totai, totai..." followed by some pretend Chinese characters, because he had convinced the kids that he could speak Chinese, when in fact he couldn´t; Aaron, "Mmmm mmmmm mmmm.... fackin´ moths" because he hates moths. One evening while we were enjoying our reebs there was a big moth in the room, and Aaron went on this hilarious rant (in his Floridian accent) about how he hates moths because they´re completely erratic, and at one point he even imitated the moth. I was laughing so hard I was crying! One meal, Suki and Aaron decided they would make the noises associated with eating good food that most people in their country (or state) would make. Suki´s (British) noise was a very high-pitched, polite-sounding "Ooo!" and Aaron´s (Floridian) noise was a long, drawn out, musical "Mmmmm mmm mm mm mmmMMM!!!" Very funny! I joined in with "Myum yum!"; and that night, as we told the story to Jabu, he said that his (Zambian) noise would be a deep, slow "mmm..." and we all laughed. Aaron then said, "So if you hear Jabu saying ´mmm´ and Suki saying ´Ooo´ late at night, don´t be alarmed! They´re just having a midnight snack." It was very funny. But back to the card! Jon´s picture was of him wearing his brightly coloured plain shirt and red suspenders (funny in themselves) but he also had a big swollen eye... because one night, probably due to a bug bite, his right eye just swelled up like a mofo and got bigger and pinker! He said it was itchy but not painful, but it was just alarming and funny for the rest of us to look at! In the card, he is saying "If it´s soft, don´t put it in your mouth... long & thin please kids! Can you tell my eye is swollen?" The first bit is from one of our campfire nights, when Jon was instructing the kids on how to make Stockbrot. You have to take the dough and wrap it around the stick (long & thin!) and cook it until it´s hard. If the dough is soft, don´t put it in your mouth because uncooked dough will give you a stomachache! But of course to the counselors with our dirty minds and better command of the language, we were pissing ourselves laughing as Jon gave his instructions. Espescially when one of the kids dared Jon to eat three sausages at once, and Jon muttered, "It wouldn´t be the first time I had that many in my mouth" and we all burst out laughing! For all his shortcomings as a director, Jon really was a very funny person. And finally.... Suki´s likeness encouragingly exclaimed, "It gives nothing you don´t can!", a direct translation of the German phrase for "There is nothing you can´t do." It was such a funny card, and on the front, instead of saying Happy Birthday or something normal, it said "Yes, yes... we know it" because one of the two-weekers had a habit of saying that to us no matter what we asked him to do. It was definitely the silliest birthday card I´ve ever received, but it really made me laugh and I really appreciated it.

Despite the problems with Jon, my weeks at Grävenwiesbach were really awesome. When it was departure day, I was relieved to be leaving Jon and to go home to sleep for a couple of days, but at the same time I knew I was going to miss the good food (believe it or not!) the beautiful meadow, the good-looking House Leader Jens (who gave me a loooong hug on my birthday and even rubbed my back, I thought I would faint but Aaron just laughed at the look on my face!), the high-energy and hilarious kids, and the super-cool counselors I´d been friends with. I think there is something really special about the camp atmosphere that just allows you to feel really close with people, no matter how short a time you´ve known them, which is one of the things I really love about being a counselor.

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