Rainstorms, dust and dressing up!

---

Time is flying by.....!!
We're already in the last session of the summer (there are 4 sessions of 2 weeks), then one week of family camp and my camp summer is already over, with a few days of traveling around the US before heading back to the Netherlands.

Some personal highlights were Olympic Day in 2nd session and going to Hampton Beach, NH on International Staff Day Off. Olympic Day is, as the name would suggest, a type of competition where the different teams are represented by the different international staff members at camp. I was team captain for the Netherlands, with a few American counselors assisting me to "lead" the campers (see pictures). There were 9 teams in total: Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Poland, Ukraine, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland. We started off with water events, swimming races, but also the more fun events for the junior campers such as the Hershey Kiss hunt. This involves packets of chocolate candy to be thrown in the lake and then the campers run in to find as many as possible! After the water events we were in 7th position...not exactly leading the way to triumph...but then there were two more events to go!Because it started raining we took the next event, the Trivia Quiz, inside to the dining hall. The questions were aimed at the different camper age groups and once the campers had answered all the questions, the staff had an opportunity to show off their general knowledge..or so I thought. Whilst there were a few questions about "general international" trivia, there were questions about US presidents, something I know fairly little about. Still, we all had a great time cheering our team on. We had made up cheers the night before. I had told the team some very typical things about the Netherlands (tulips, windmills, canals, cheese, clogs, etc) which we used in our cheers, one of which was to the tune of the song "The Venga Bus is coming". You see, we know how to have a lot of fun over here..! By lunchtime, the Dutch team was in first place!!! After never making it higher than 6th place during my summer's here, you can imagine my excitement. I wasn't here for the last part of Olympic Day but we ended up coming in 3rd place, which made me extremely proud :)

On International Day Off we left early from a very rainy camp, to arrive in a much sunnier Hampton Beach after an hour's drive. We looked around the cheesy boulevard shops, took pictures and then just relaxed on the beach. As we don't often get the chance to have our days off with as many of the staff, this was a great day spent together, playing volleyball, frisbeeing, sleeping..After this relaxing day on the beach we headed for nearby Portsmouth where we went to Margarita's, a Mexican restaurant, where I had an amazing meal (reminding me of me and Krista's amazing Mexico trip....).

After the extremely wet and stormy 2nd session, spent inside with lots of rainy day programs, (for example the Song or Skit Contest) 3rd session was an extremely HOT session. With temperatures around 30-35 degrees, horse riding was a very sweaty and dusty activity to run. Still, sign-ups were popular, and the trails were the campers' favorite. After these trails we return to our bungalows all tanned, only to find that our tan is actually a layer of brown dust on our faces and arms..!

Throughout the summer we have had Vespers (an evening skit with a message, accompanied by songs), Staff Talent Show (skits, songs, dances) and of course the dress-up lunches or activities. For the Staff Talent show, the program staff performed a skit where we all had very "interesting" characters to play. I was a siamese twin with Nicola, where we wore the same outfit, and connected our heads by braiding our hair together (the picture below was taken before we braided it). For the second talent show I was the shooter in another program staff skit. This obviously impressed a lot of the campers as they came up to me later and said how"bad" I looked... For other occasions I dressed up as Catwoman, Barbie and a farmer woman. See the Tarzan and Jane picture for other staff members' dress-up outfits. Dressing up does not get crazier than here!

On another night off, the program staff decided to stay on camp property, so we took the boats across to the camp's own island in the middle of the lake (shown on the pictures below). We made a camp fire and roasted marshmallows while telling each other stories and jokes (mostly provided by camp's own Borat, our Polish kitchen staff member Jakub). We then camped in tents, and returned the next morning for breakfast at 7.50.

That's all for now, my next entry will probably be during my travels, exciting!

---