lora.wilki.me

final day and camp was devastating but amazing. We had our cabin packed and cleaned first, so were done by 10 and waiting for the others. Everyone had a picnic altogether by the waterside pavilion and the tears began. Ruth, Emma, Nat, MJ and Jenna wrote me letters that nearly broke my heart It sounds silly – but because we class Jenna as one of us internationals, it genuinely never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t be able to see her as soon as we get home! It was so sad to read a goodbye from my travel buddy, gonna miss her too much, at some point in my life I’m gonna have to find an excuse to go to Tasmania So Rach, Nat, Jenna and Mary all left along with the Americans that day they’re all heading into new York where they split up to different directions – As I post this – Rach will already be back in England – her plane going in the opposite direction to mine We all got so emotional that afternoon, but managed to hold it together until the next day. Because a few of us were staying an extra night before our plans begun, we had the chance to go to a real life double A baseball game!!! We watched the New Britain Rockcats get thrashed by the Reading Phillies and discovered that actually, despite what Nick says, baseball is actually really boring! Connri staff made it good though, yeahhhhh! We chanted, yelled, sang the entire 3hours – we got the crowd all going – people moved to come to sit next to us and learn all our songs! It was so much fun! Random advertising, including a barney the dinosaur dance off and Dunkin Donut&coffee race! There were some staff from ‘camp Chase’ there as well – they came and learnt our chants and offered us all jobs for next year :p AMAZING night, even got pics with the mascot! Before the game we all went for the Chinese buffet. It was a lot of fun – James ‘are you up for it’ and our 2^nd fake-date! It was so sad playing yellow car for the last time (until like November when he comes back to Manchester and its onnn!) I totally wasn’t on my game and now have bruises. After the evening was through me and Emma had our last Connri sleepover (we’re having one the week we’re both back in the UK!) and said our goodbyes to the chipmunks. In the morning we all met for hugs on the office porch steps. Into the van we got – and saying goodbye to James, Sarah and Jamie the last drop off before ours at the airport finally got my tears flowing. As soon as we left I saw a yellow beatle and Rach’s song ‘give me everything’ came on the radio. It was like Jeez, shove it in my face, I know I miss them! final reminders: Mary and Joseph Rosie and Jim, Capt Dave gage chamipon, he’s the only one on it tonight, Rach’s song, Brittani, saving the baby mouse, Melon – the name, silly bands, James’ walkine confidence ‘the girls are too scared to ask – joke!’, everyday – hillsong …and plenty more!!!

Day 1: Had a really fun opening day with Chloe ‘bantz’ Bush and MJ. We only have 8 girls! And get this…none of them are on meds! We don’t need to trek to the nurses breakfast, lunch and dinner!!! Yeah we have a mixed bunch…a lot of them have been to camp before and had drama with the other counsellors, but for some reason they never try and bring it to us This is one of the only 2 weeks of camp the parents pay for their kids to come, which means they’re often spoilt and know very little about God…we’ll see what they’re like tomorrow with devotions! The girls were overjoyed to learn gaga, they really enjoyed ropes too! Amber ran upto me about 15minutes in going ‘James is the hottest staff member on camp’ after which everyone jumped onto that bandwagon! All we’ve heard about is ‘whose hotter James or Rob?’ they’re obsessed and its only early days – they’re like 11! They’ve got years left of this :s James loved it anyway! After dinner Chloe, Jamie and I had a few flip flop fights! Cabin 10 counsellors nearly cried at our last ever campfire! They had to move us inside after early-smores because of a storm threat – but we’re still waiting on it! It was sad seeing everyones best skits for the last time, we even brought out a new one On a happier note – we have a LOVELY girl Kimberly who looks exactly like ICarly on Nikelodeon, some people recon she’s more Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical, but nope, she’s definitely Miranda Crosgrove (Icarly…I now know WAYYY too much, even more than I already did, about silly pre-teen shows and movies!). Day 2: So last night me and MJ had our biggest fight yet. She left me alone with all our kids who were being awful –just left (every night 2 counsellors from each cabin are on duty in case one needs to go to the nurse etc, 2 are on night break…we were on duty) for 50 minutes, and when she does finally show up, she’s sat outside on the deck with Omar (boys are not allowed anywhere near the girls villiage despite them having got away with this for 6 weeks now) making loads of noise for 35minutes! When she finally came to ask me ‘hows it going’  I was cold…and then we just STARTED. She didn’t like being called selfish much, which is an argument Chloe and I have both had with her before – so she proceeded to shout the villiage down for an hour (both Sarah in cabin 5, and Ruth in cabin 6 could hear it all) about me, and all the ‘stuff’ she’s constantly got on, that of course no one else has on either. I’m so through with the stinking attitude of SOME of the American staff here. I feel, as do Chloe and Emma and Sarah, that there is no way these staff members are meant to be the same age as us! They are more childish and immature than the campers, and I don’t know if its because they can get another job just as easy, but they don’t care about the job or the kids! Saying that, Cabin 6 (Emma’s cabin) has a lovely group of counsellors, they got lucky! I ran over there still in floods this morning, I love those guys, Emma, girl Jamie and Jezzika. Jamie looked after me today, we had a counsellor meeting during devotions which she brought me candy for, and I’ve been getting hugs from Ruth at least once every 15minutes today! That’s kept it bearable… the tension between our cabin is not nice. Even Natalie’s awkward about it, I’ve not spoken to her much recently, she’s become really good friends with MJ’s group. It was tacky day today though which put a fun twist on things. The girls obsessed over a boy from cabin 1, and we played more gaga and volleyball than is healthy. Everyone is in a weird mood this week, two of my best friends have had devastating problems with their relationships back home, and the inspector and our bosses came on a rampage today, particularly shouting at Mary, very unfairly, for being waterfront director! Not impressed, and the atmosphere isn’t pleasant. Most people are walking around about to cry if someone poked them – hopefully moral will be up tomorrow, it’s Emma’s birthday!!! (she won’t let anyone forget about it) Just gonna grab some beads with Rach to make her a bracelet, Jezzika and Ros are on decorations Day 3: It was wacky hair day today – Becki backcombed her entire head of hair into an afro just to inspire people! We have some real characters at camp in general this week – Hunter, a feminine little boy who just says the funniest things, today he got crazy upset because some girls called him a fishstick – he was thrilled that I gave him permission to go back and call them chicken nuggets! :p One of my girls wears odd shoes…in a strange way, not as a fashion statement :s yeah my girls are pretty uninspiring this week, not much personality, though I did have fun with ICarly (Kimberly) on a double kayak this afternoon! So it was Emma’s birthday – that was the main theme of the day, and what a time she had! Playscape, cupcakes and singing in the day – then we threw a massive party in the staff lounge for her during our night break! It was so much fun, Me, Mary, Emma and Katia literally danced the entire night, and most of them lasted until at least 11 (curfew is halfpast!) Amazing night going crazy and the day was good to be away from MJ for most of it – our breaks were scheduled well. Tomorrow not so much, but I’m looking forward to more waterfront time with Mary, Emma and Sarah! Day 4: Today was much better than the last few – Lord’s day is always nice and the service was particularly touching. We sang my favourite a-la-la-laa-la-la-la-le-lujah scratch another back! Chloe and Jamie sang and played the piano which was so cute. The staff kids and Christie and Christine did the most adorable sacred dance to ‘I am a friend of God’! Everyone was more teary even than usual – culmination of a great talk and final full day blues. Especially Rach, Emma and Chelsea of course! I was excited after lunch that it was the last time we had to eat that awful mashed potato and luncheon beef though! In the afternoon me and Emma slept through break, I booked an LA taxi, and we spent the rest of the afternoon swimming and playing gaga! There were thunder threats but it didn’t stop playscape time! We had good fun with Jamie, Jezzika and the others with campers doing crazy hairstyles and, as usual, Emma and I singing some cheesy pop! For evening programme for an easy last night of work we had movie night and watched the parent trap. The whole time we were like ‘their counsellors are trash!’ they just let their campers wander all over the place, and how illegal is the isolation cabin! We’ve learnt too much about life at camp I was on night break so was able to go to the last vespers. We were encouraged, although we’re all broken, to let our light shine through those cracks which was a lovely thing to leave us with – as we go out as lights! Jeana did her testimony which was amazing to hear, and Jezzika performed a sacred dance she’d been working on! It was a lovely, full, but sad service and the mood continued until curfew. Me and Jeana just walked back sorrowfully – at least we get an extra night tomorrow with some of our very bestfriends!

The banquet was SO AMAZING! They spent over $400 on Hawaiian decorations and they hired caterers to man a bbq where we could choose what went on our own skewers, mmm shrimp! The cookout was delicious and so was the chocolate lava fountain and fruit! They made smoothies and pink lemonade and after a while we got a limbo going! Those boys are like elastic, Jamie and Omar were just sliding under that thing, I’ve never seen anything like it! The whole atmosphere was so just so cute, everyone so dressed up and sat at tables like it was a wedding! Such a change to see everyone looking their normal selves when we’re usually in camp-wear! Everyone was seated after that and then the BEST bit came! Capt. Dave went around with the microphone and got everyone to place a lei around the person’s neck to the right and say something they appreciate about them! I got to pass to my bestie Emma, and Ruth passed to me with ‘you’re the best hugger ever!’. Next came the exchange of Secret angel presents! Sarah was my secret angel! She’s made me some lovely stuff through the week including a photo frame yesterday! For my present she got me a frog eye mask, she knows how much I needed a new one I gave James his yellow-mini…waited for him to open it, and as soon as I saw a glimpse of yellow, THUMPED HIM! I think he liked it . After all of our appreciation and generosity towards eachother, it was time for awards! James and I won Mr and Mrs Best Hair and I was also nominated for best dressed! The top 3 they commended for best dressed were all from cabin 10 – Chloe, Natalie and I, so we can safely say we’re the most stylish cabin! The certificate was so cute, and they also got us all a copy of the staff picture, think that might be the one for my frame! Some people were so funny about their awards – for instance when the providence boys won biggest flirts, Sami won ‘biggest complainer’ ‘what, really, are you serious this is ridiculous’ and Brittanni won most dramatic ‘oh my goodness!’! Some people got really upset – cause where some people like Jamie got about 5 awards, a lot of people didn’t even get nominated – which left a mixed mood! We carried on the party afterwards in the staff lounge with a soul line, a dougie circle, and lots of elastic from the boys! It was one of the best nights of my life, I loved our ‘official’ goodbye party!

Day 2: It was a good day, despite me, Mj and 4 of our campers catching our first camp virus (to be honest, I’m shocked it took this long for one to reach us!) and being hooked on cough drops! Secret Angel update – I’ve found 5 not-too-hardcore encouraging bible verses for James, one for every day, and written them on stars to attach to his snack every day I received my first gift this morning, an entire box of Swedish fish I ate them ALL during my break Playscape club was funny today – a little girl Kylie was NOT looking where she was running and slammed straight into my back, flipping over my head and landing on the gravel (I was sat down, she was not super-tall). The funny thing though was because my natural reaction was a massive ‘owwww’, the little girl ran up and immediately began apologising because she didn’t want to get in trouble with a counsellor! I was like Omgosh, no, are YOU alright, the poor thing took quite a hit! Lesson learnt to focus though Oh gosh Eddie was annoying in our Athletics time today. He introduced the group to chairball because there was drilling going on at the other end of the basketball pitch –only I think this nois instantly got on his nerves because he shouted at our kids the entire session. Chloe and I wanted to kick him by 10minutes in – how are they meant to be motivated to learn when they’re being asked if they’re stupid because the game was confusing them?! After lunch the campers forgot about their demoralising morning and began their massage competition for CDA time It was sooooo good and the nice breeze not making swimming feel too hot afterwards meant the day was very relaxing indeed! Evening programme was fab! We had a each party with hula and sandcastle competitions, races and dancing! I taught a line of our cabin how to do the Spice Girls dancing justice – I feel incredibly old that some of them had no idea this amazing group ever even existed! They can now slam it to the left pretty decently, don’t worry! Day 3: I’m really coming down with something, not feeling good at all! Powering through, had a long chat with Martina abiut the letter she wrote me r.e. never seeing me again, it was so cute and broke my heart in CDA James let us steal some of his break and have an extra ropes session in the forest this time! It was fun and they enjoyed it! Still wet (and hugging me after every time they went in the lake in order to make me gradually soaked to death myself) from swimming we trouped to boating! There bigger Taylor, Natalia, Marilyn and myself took a peddle boat and took off lily pad collecting! WE HAD TACOS FOR ;UNCH! That made the day instantly fantastic, and we topped it all off with watching princess diaries in princess night! My lovely Secret Angel wrote me a lovely note in a handmade card which I appreciate so much! Trying my best to not give in to asking who it is! During Playscape time one of the girls wet herself, and the session generally revolved around toilet breaks! Night break was positive though, as my and the 3 other girls booked New York for 2 days time, wooo! Me and Emma were saying during morning break – over here its just not a big deal – like, we’re talking about popping into NYC like its just nothing, whereas back home, being told you could go on a weekend break there would be so random and WOW Day 4: Lord’s day service was powerful as usual. The majority of our campers are from broken families, but praying with some of these kids was the most hearbreaking thing I’ve ever done! Some of these kids from Greater Hartford are hurting so bad, but with God’s help, beginning to trust in the God they’ve learnt about this week! Their prayers are so full, even during our own devotions at night, there’s always lots to say – my prayers are going to be HUGE by the end of this experience, remembering everyone! Theres not one badly behaved kid this week, just some annoying ones. Luckily on Sundays we never seem to have that much concentrated time with them! In CDA they packed and straightened my hair. It’s been raining (this day, again, ALL DAY this time!) heavily so swimming was cancelled and replaced with ‘Connri feud’ (family feud) which was fun! It’s getting kinda cold now! Been living in my jeans and finding it very hard to get out of bed in the mornings, that, and the trails of crumbs making the floor quite unpleasant to step on, left from the mice :s Because of the rain Cabin 10 along with 6 (Emma, Jamie and Jeana’s cabin!) got stuck int he dining hall which ended up being a fab turn of events! Emma and I put Taylor swift on full blast and we had a pop disco for a full hour! It was so much fun belting it out at the top of our lungs, dancing around the tables, trying to get the other counsellors involved MJ had an argument with Chloe and I during the day but fortunately by wacky fashion show time in the evening she’d got over it and we had a great time with new catagories of beach (we even brought in snookie), hippy, fairytale etc! Our wedding scene was even pumped up a notch – we had a ‘stopper’ and a fight and everything we had LOVELY evening devotions tonight! We got into two groups and one at a time went into the middle where everyone laid hands on them and said something they prayed for the person or liked about them. The girls got really into it and it was really nice for MJ and I to be in the same group, focusing on the positive about eachother. She said we’re more like siblings now, which I guess sums it up perfectly. Sometimes we’re not exactly who the other would ideally spend ever minute of the day with, we might not be exactly the perfect complimentarypersonality we’d ideally like…but we love eachother for it neverthe less and with a week left, we need to realise and appreciate that more. Thecampers said some really nice thing too which was so touching. After we’d prayed however Martina’s face and arms swelled up in a massive rash – must have been from someones clothes/its fabric during the fashion show – and her, Taylor and I had to run and wake up the nurse! She wasn’t mad fortunately and was glad we’d come as it was an allergic reaction! She got it under control and gave us a ride back in her golf buggy! It seems like years ago now we were allowed to drive them around when it was just us internationals! I wish we could make time go slower! Lora and Natalie time now <3

Last day of break was nice and chilled. We walked to Dunkin Donuts discussing the aftermath of the rachel-rob-chelsea triangle. It was really funny actually – the walk is like 40 minutes to the nearest food place – a sports bar, which outside said ‘families welcome’. Of course we assumed, upon seeing this, that going in for food would be okay! Apparently it was not. It took us a few goes of plucking up the courage in the first place, and it was just such a fail. Fortunately though after the trek of a walk and food chill JP and our new lifeguard Josh turned up in there and Josh’s mum offered us a lift back to camp We generally just chilled and facebooked the rest of the day, heard about the riots, panicked, and contacted home! Vespers in the evening was just the cutest thing ever. We had a Love Feast (kinda like Communion, only huggier) and all us staff went up to eachother and gave bread and said something we really appreciated about them! A lot of people cried, especially Emma, as usual, because quite a few are leaving to go on another camp of their own, so we won’t see them again Afterwards I beat Eddie at pool (with the help of Baby Mia potting 3 of mine by hand ) and everyone started swapping presents with their secret angels…I managed to get Omar to give my first gift to James so hopefully he doesn’t have anything twigged…although I’m still sure he knows! We had another amazing opening day 1 with our new set of girls this Thursday. Guess who managed to come back for their 4^th weeks? Martina and Taylor! Those girls might as well have just moved in, they love camp so much! Camp’s small this week, one of the girl cabins has been shut down so there’s 3 boy and 3 girl cabins! The boys only have about 8 kids in theirs whereas us girls are still on 14ish. SUCH a great day in so many ways though, particularly the 3hour chat me and chloe had this evening on duty, covering everything from God (she’s a fellow spring harvest lover) to university! Loved it, it even kept me up until curfew! :p Right, the some of the best bits: Martin the Grasshopper, ALL us girl cabins booking the CDA time so us counsellors all got to chill together, father Abraham, and are you cereal? The bestest bits however are yet to come. During swimming James was helping out and goes ‘how any man points would I get if I pushed Lora in the Lake’ Chloe answers ‘10’ James answers ‘for real? How about for you?’ She says ‘100, cause you’ll never get me in that lake’ …what does he do, pick her up fully clothed, steps into the lake off the deep end of the dock with her over his shoulder! Me and Natalie just watched as if it were in slow motion, we never actually believed he’d do it – she was fully clothed and we get in so much trouble for getting the staff t-shirts wet! Typical James, hilarious though! We have a lovely LOUD camper Shariah who likes to remind anyone who can hear that she is, after all, the tiniest one in the cabin. This is causing me and MJ some laughs as we frequently humour her going, ‘oh my, did you realise you’re the smallest/shortest/tiniest in the cabin?’ which cracks us up – because she goes off in a spiel every time oblivious to our teasing :p  James made me go on the climbing wall today, I didn’t get very far. Its always my favourite activity though and we had a great first afternoon together as a cabin! Marilyn (another favourite of mine, a new favourite from last week) also returned this week and now got to the top of her 4^th and final side of the climbing wall! We managed to arrange the very best activity ever for CDA tomorrow – a few of the girls give really good massages and (they genuinely really want to without us even having suggested this!) we’re going to have a massage competition with me , MJ and Chloe as the judges! This means we get a free and GOOD 45minute massage, I cannot wait! Sadly today’s practise round resulted in me and Clo running for miles as they attempted to tickle us instead at times,…but we’re holding out more hope for tomorrow! VERY BEST MOMENT EVER THOUGH = Brittani took a 45minute video last night in their cabin on Jeana…SLEEP LAUGHING! This was not just giggling, it was full on gaffawing, at the very end she was even knee slapping and woke herself up – hence why it was the end! It was too funny for words and I’ll show the video to anyone I can! Jeana remembers nothing of her dream other than that she was running from someone Classic!

I love this week’s campers so much! We have some absolute loves – this always happens on the weeks I’m most scared! The thought of 17 kids, like teen camp had me petrified and it’s turned out to be the nicest group ever! There’s a girl Luisa who looks exactly like a younger Dr. Burns from Didsbury dentist. An amazing girl Wilmarie who was telling me about the youth work she loves doing at church (yayyy, some of them know Jesus this week!) and at least 7 girls of Puertorican/Colombian origin are teaching me Spanish. I have 6 of my ex-campers from other weeks – some of my favourite ones! Kivanna and Martina (wooo Martina!) from Music camp, Aspen, Yessenia and Taylor from Core camp 1, and Jera from last week! We got them to guess all our ages at the start – my age was between 24-27 according to them! Later on when they’d forgotton and got to know me better, it was more like ‘you’re 16 right’ ‘NO’ ‘really? You act fun!’. They call me mermaid this week. James managed this ropes session to survive without being given a nickname, shock horror! We had a fun session, one girl Marilyn made it to the top of the climbing wall on 3 different sides! And she’s the first girl to even get to the top! The group are really chatty and friendly with everyone! Tables at lunch have been mixed which is nice, as have cabins – one big family this week? They’ve already asked if they can friend request me on facebook going on my break in the evening they barricaded me in and floored me cause they didn’t want me to go! It hurt, both the flooring and leaving them! Campfire was usual fun, we got first smores and were first to night meds so didn’t have to wait too long with the smelly boys and Nick from cabin 1! One of my campers asked if I was Nick’s mum! HAHAHAHAHA! Night break me and Jenna booked Boston, woooo! Such a relief to know I’m going! We’re staying for a night which will be cool – I guess if I had have gone last weekend we would have only got  a day in, but James is also not able to come with us now. Team travel-Lora and Jenna, seem to be sticking together for trips now! It’s nice as we don’t get to see each other much in the week! Day 2: I’m on such a high, we had such a great day! We’ve just got back from evening programme – we had a wacky fashion show! It was amazing, the kids got mad creative and brought some amazing outfits down the catwalk! One group had a wicked actress as a sumo wrestler in the sports category, to our golfer! There was a fruit category – we did a banana, a geek category – we got full on nerdy! Our best two have got to be though our turtle role play whilst modelling for animal, and in the wedding category – when we full on reenacted a Grecian wedding, complete with Jacob as father of the bride and a whole chorus of crying guests It was so much fun and EVERYONE got involved and loved it! That and pirate night are up there – and not justttt cause I get to have fun dressing up too The girls are still an absolute dream. We had some lovely prayers this evening, a fun time ‘twizzling’ on the deck (you would never guess we’re the oldest cabin) and making masks for eachother in arts and crafts! Rach hadn’t really planned anything for the session bless her, but we had a good time! Marilyn managed to dip her hands in floor paint though and Clo spent 25minutes scrubbing them with a lufa to get them clean! They caught a grasshopper and carried it around for them most for the day, though I believe it embraced its freedom during athletics while I was on break! The funniest thing today though has to be: they closed down Chloe’s kick ball club and replaced it with beat boxing! Made our lives, Nick and I were wetting ourselves when the announcement was read out. Can’t wait to hear her spit some beats! The only thing that has sadly sobered me this evening is the fact that Leeandra leaves in the morning She wrote me a note I’m not allowed to read until she’s gone, but she was crying so much I’m not looking forward to my tears starting in the morning love and miss her already, and am attempting to force her to England, somehow, some way! Note to self: amazon her my fave bible notes, and remind her to make me a playlist of cheesy American pop we’re lacking in! Day 3: had another amazing day! Best bit: found a massive fluffy black caterpillar, pick it up, Jamie runs over ‘that is Connecticut’s most poisonous caterpillar’ I know he’s messing but still jump 10 feet in the air dropping it by natural reaction! Lola proceeded to stamp on it (she looks like Dora the explorer…and is Mexican…so she really is dora and gets away with a lotttt!). In devotions this morning I had one of my campers, 11year old Chloe, who wants to go to Harvard so bad, making more obvious bible mistakes! Jonah ‘he’s the one who built the boat right?’ David ‘he’s the one who had the technicolour coat right?’ Joseph ‘now he’s definitely the one with goliath!’. We acted out our version of Jonah and the whale complete with dancing gangs, and had a lot of fun getting dramatic! This week we’ve been given a yearbook voting slip thing for camp – its got different catagories on it that we’ve got to write down a him and her for each – Ronshay told me at lunch that I’m currently leading on ‘best eyes’, ‘best hair’ andddd ‘best laugh’ so feeling pretty chuffed! We’ll see what happens on awards evening! So the rest of the day – we had some rather talented archers this week, some very muddy swimmers, and me and James had many fake-fights watching k9 cops during our break! There was a real fight today however. There’s a female staff member who likes making up the most ridiculous rumours here at camp and today one was found out – Rob went mad at her over dinner! It was so awkward, Natalie, Eddie, James, Jenna and I wanted the ground to swallow us up, was just cringing waiting for James to make some hideously inappropriate comment! When talk of all that became old news on the camp grounds we had beat the geek again for evening programme! It was due to be a Hawaiian beach party, however the storm made that impossible! It was fun, and Nat and I discovered a camper that looks kinda like a dinosaur. D-I-N-O-S-A-U-R! In my break tomorrow I’m gonna find out which breed it is Two of our campers, Shailanis and Chloe made it to the final! We had a really fun evening back in the cabin – proper girly chat and giggle with MJ and Nat. MJ also filled me in on the full story of what Hartford’s like – and not my Gilmore girls idea of it. It made me really angry at how different TV portrays it, just on its stereotype of Connecticut being the Insurance State – the reality is that there is not much insurance of anything in this place. It was eye opening. Before I forget, Katia destroys my laundry bag more and more each week – this week it vanished. First one strap, then the other, then the bottom and sides – this week it turned into an IKEA bag! Grrrr! Day 4: So since 23:04 last night it has hailed golf balls none stop! It was impossible to sleep and today has been pretty slow and wet! The only time anyone can move is in massive packs between places with water and a bathroom – so we’ve been inside the cabins, pavilion and dining hall allll day! This has meant some great things though, in Sunday service a lot of the girls were really moved by the message – especially our Harvard Chloe! It’s so exciting seeing her getting it, she’s really anxious about asking her family to go to church so please be praying for this! Martina and Maria were also moved to tears, it’s so powerful watching these girls delve deeper! The rain also meant we saw a grasshopper ‘give birth’ (‘til we found out they lay eggs, and it was probably just dieing! ‘hold its hand, push grasshopper!’ I’ll be black. All White then. We had some good fun doing a mini-dutch auction in our cabin! When things cleared up a bit for nature we had another VERY interesting session! They caught 2 gross-looking fish and…wait for it…A SNAPPING TURTLE! Those things are ugly, and we watched it eat a frog like last week! Unlike the snake, the turtle managed it in one bite, slightly less screaming, more ew’s this time Evening programme was hilarious, we did camper vs staff Olympics – the staff lost by miles but it was great seeing everyone doing the silly challenges! Really good evening programme! The only annoying thing was that programme staff had been given the night off…the entire day Rach and Ros have been asleep in the staff lounge, and its getting to the point now that us counsellors are just exasperated that we get the same amount with such a different work load! Grrr, it was very annoying and had us all very angry anyway! I had 10 out of 15 crying on leaving day, its so sad knowing that its unlikely I’ll ever see some of them again They were amazing girls and I can tell they’re gonna have a very blessed year!

Well this staff break has got to be one of my favourite ones! We started it off as soon as the kids went with a music marathon in the Kitchen – all of us picked our 3 favourite songs and we had a rotation so that over the space of about 2 hours everyones got played and nothing else! Some peoples selections were so suprising, like we never ever would have guessed  Eddie would be into krunk and rap, hahaha! Later that afternoon after some snoozing, me and James managed to persuade captain Dave that we really really needed a mcdonalds! He took the two of us with 17 orders to the smallest one I’ve ever been into in my life and we had fun trying to sort everything out! We had a good system of checking things off though, and made sure we got every single bit of the order, including an extra double cheeseburger which we got to share! It was sooooo good to have non-camp food, supersize meal portions as well! As soon as the food arrived Ros suggested that some of us camped out! I was sooo up for that and me, Emma and James ran to collect firewood and got the fire started! Everyone joined us my the fire for a while, but the only ones who managed the night were Me, Emma, James, Ros and Steve…well I say that, but I was woken up at 7AM by Ros cause only us two and James remained! I slept so well, I’ve never seen so many stars – it was just incredible! I saw 4 shooting stars! We could even see Jupiter! We sang loads of songs, and had loadsa deep chats , the usual kinda campfire stuff before settling to sleep…not a single Coyote appeared to bother us! The only reason we awoke at 7AM was because we went to 6 Flags, MA today! Its an amazing theme park and water park!!! We all squished in the van early to try and get a head start on lines! James punched me in the face in the van when we were playing yellow car…my lip is gonna be massive this week and I’ll never let him live it down! We split into groups early on and Rach, Emma,Nat, Ros, Steve, Christie and I made our way to the BIG ride. Bizarro was the worst experience of my life. Rach cried next to me the entire time and the ride itself was horrendous. We got off faint, sick and my knees would not stop shaking for 10mins! Me, Rach and Emma just hated it, Christie and Steve never made it on by the sight of it but Ros and Nat (and everyone in the other groups) loved it! Just not our cup of tea. We had a crazily over priced lunch and took it easy on the cable cars, swings and balloon rides for a bit! From this point on Rach and Emma never made it onto any other rides :p Nat, Christie and I tried the other big ones which were amazing – much better, particularly Batman and Mind eraser (the theme of the park is DC comics and Looney Tunes). The rest of the afternoon/ evening, the three of us went to the waterpark to be bowled over by CLEAN CHLORINATED WATER and sunbeds! We had a much needed nap and sunbathe and basked in the cool water – perfect end to the trip! When we arrived back at 10ish, me and James tried to book for us to go to Boston the day after, only my card will not work!!! Getting slightly stressed I’m not gonna get to go now, but determined to make it happen next weekend – even if everyone else is at Rob’s party and I have to go on my own – I can’t go home without seeing this city! In the last day of break 15 of us took a trip to Bigalow State Park and hung out in the CLEAN lake there for the whole day! We had a bbq, the boys fished (James found a nice dead one to taunt me with) and we admired the forests – lovely day The pale boys have pretty red necks though! On the way there we stopped at Big y’s and bought some essentials. This is the first supermarket we’ve been to that has fruit – it was sooooo good and me and Rach shared a pack of grapes about the size of plums! (Anna, if you’re reading…this time they are green grum’s ) We didn’t have much time when we got back before devotions so we ran into our groups and had fun pointing south-west with Ronshay and the rest of Studygroup Lora. At the end of the devotions we had a short meeting about the cabin changes. Management didn’t want to close our cabin, but instead, to replace Leeandra going in 2 days, Chloe is moving in tomorrow! This is great, Chloes one of my good friends and a hard worker so it’ll be great for the dynamics in cabin 10 I think Hoping for lots of Leeandra-time before she goes, but really looking forward to it being mixed up for my sanity’s sake!!! Welcome Chloe! Cabin 10 is very pleased to have you!

So day 2 was random! Our alarm didn’t go off in the morning so it was a panic start to the day! Thank goodness Emma had been wandering past to borrow some moisturiser from me and realised none of our lights were on yet! The girls were so good, I went into survival mode and we got there, dressed, ready, cabins tidy, makeup done (I have the oldest, most high maintenance girls ever) and actually 4^th to flagpole! All things considered, I think that is EXCELLENT!!! I was on morning break so began to recover from the wake up shock after breakfast, and joined the girls for a messy lunch! Swimming time was odd…the geese had pooped a crazy amount in the water and it was just not clean enough to go in, so we were gaga-ing for all of that time! The weather today has been threatening a storm constantly! It’s been frequent drizzle, but just threats so far! (for future reference, unless its cloudiness/storminess is brought up, the weather will be roasting hot sunny) Leeandra suddenly got incredibly ill so she’s been in the nurse’s office ever since swim time, poor her Becki was with me this afternoon to replace her! Orienteering was successful. I was in a group with some of my favourites (they actually call me Mom this week) and we got everything very quickly! It was so much fun having different staff dynamics for the afternoon, it was really energetic and we got them playing lots more games than usual in CDA, much better when there’s more than one organising stuff! Becki did mention though, that because Leeandra sadly leaves in a weeks time, as do 2 other counsellors, our cabin may be the one shut down for the remainder of camp! I will still have a job, don’t worry, I’ll just be thrown into a new cabin/ be a floating counsellor AWAY FROM NATALIE so I’m dreading this a little bit, apparently I’m not allowed to take my lifeguard with me!? Evening programme was fun, we had a Dutch Auction with the boys so did a lot of acting and creative activities! We had an amazing idea for ‘pokemon in a pokeball’ with our 20 random items we brought with us I’ve had some funny comments aimed at me today. I’ve got 2 checkers this week, who like to remind me of the slightest thing going wrong with my face ‘your mascara’s clumpy’, ‘a bug sat on your cheek then it moved’, ‘you have a lot of spots don’t you’. Amongst these unnecessarily true and annoying comments I’ve had some boosts. Apparently I look like the kind of girl who would be a cheerleader, and because I’m good at volleyball I could be in the OC. Its also the 4^th and 5^th times now, yes I’m really gonna count, I’ve been told I’m an older Miley. Thank goodness for those nicer comments! We had a little one crying in the evening which was sad. None of these girls really know anything about God either so it was the first time she’d ever prayed about anything like this! Hopefully that’s something I can change this week Day 3 really showed how little they knew; in the evening we had ‘beat the geek’ as the evening programme. It included some amazing fancy dress but also our cabin incorrectly answering ‘who was the first man in the bible?’ with ‘Enoch’, and ‘where was Jesus born?’ with ‘Bridgeport’ (down the road in New Haven). Just to reiterate, these girls are 12 and I have little hope for the education system over here…even with no church background I’m pretty sure any 6 year old in Britain would answer ‘Adam’ and ‘Bethlehem’! Despite their poor luck against our bible geek and school geek they had better luck against Natalie the Disney Geek and Mary the Connri geek! During the daytime we had a difficult day due to the amount of bullying we have this week. There’s 2 distinct groups amongst our girls which has caused too many problems. Archery in the scorching, shadeless field didn’t ease everyones hot tempers either! Day 4 opened with a lot of conflict – the bullying is getting really out of control so we’ve literally split it into two separate A and B cabin parts. MJ is with one, I’m with the other and Leeandra covers whichever of us is on break. MJ’s still driving me insane, but not long left of that now. I’m soooo devastated Leeandra leaves next week, I love our chats. We get properly deep about God and that girl is just too funny for words. Last night she climbed out of bed, back up, down again, walked back and forth round the room, back up again, felt her (none existant…like the rest of us) abs, went ‘That was a good work out’ and was snoring again – ALL WHILST ASLEEP! Tonight we had a full on cheesy pop concert, it was amazing, we have too many things in common that most people don’t like *cough Hannah montanna, glee, HSM cough*. During the daytime we split into two groups for devotions after Lord’s day, made up a funny story about Kagjolica the Connri giant, but didn’t get as deep as other weeks, sadly. It was good considering some of them have never even prayed before and Amber offered to say one for the entire group! All through lunch we played ‘tarzan the monkey man, swinging from a rubber band, flip flop broke his nose what colour was his blood’. I also had my hair done several times waiting for tacos. Swimming was chill, got some accountability time with Emma – she gave her testimony this morning and it was great! She did amazingly, and she’s my best Christian friend here so had me tearing up! So proud I spent break chillin’ with Nick, he’s slowly getting me to grips with baseball! It’s so confusing! I beat all my campers in gaga again, seriously considering taking up volleyball when I get home! Carnival was usual fun in the evening, Ruth got very dunked, Sarah looked hilar getting a bug outa her eye, and my campers chased James until his legs would no longer work! I must download the cupid shuffle. Nature was THE BEST as usual though! We caught a watersnake as well as a big toad and watched the fight commence. I’ve never laughed so much in my life as when that snake pounced and caught the toad, it was crazy and only centimetres away from us through the glass tank! The snake ate it the wrong way round and didn’t kill it properly so it was still jumping in his throat! We could see it! He chucked it up and proceeded to re-eat it the right way round, still alive again! It was gross, and the girls’ faces were priceless! MJ grabbed my hand and was screaming something rotten, I couldn’t help but laugh at the situation!!! Day 5 they left smoothy, some promising to return in a few weeks time, we’ll see how that goes! Lunchtime!

Our new campers are a really nice bunch! At first I was like ‘oh no’, they came in talking about wigi boards and smacking up some girls they don’t like…but thankfully I don’t think that’s a true representation of what they’re like! We’ve had a lot of fun, no water spills at dinner for the first time ever! I have more twins, Brianna (my 3^rd Brianna in 2weeks) and Brittany, who are obsessed with my Englishness! They’re hilarious, some of the stuff they come out with! ‘theres vampires in Russia right?’ ‘What would you do if your name was moose?’ and they have a massive crush on James already, catching onto calling him Bieber! We got our Mancunian accents and some of our sayings made fun of a lot in ropes– just to play up to it now we say ‘mad for it’ a lot more than usual…in fact, before here I don’t think I’ve ever said it before! The other girls had a lot of fun speaking backwards for some reason. Arol and Semaj got very confused. As soon as the girls arrived they were very social! We has inch worm (caterpillar) races for the first 20mins which was hilarious (they don’t really go in an intended direction). Then both our Jasmines were very interested in the differences between pounds and dollars so we got some English currency out and had some really interesting chats about that! They all passed swim test and I had the time to have a lengthy chat with Sarah which was sooo nice! We’re getting some travelling plans together. Flag lowering was just the funniest; it was our cabin’s turn to lower and fold. If it were flag raising our cabin had been selected for, I wouldn’t have been allowed to go up with our four chosen campers as I could not pledge allegiance, being an alien and all, but lowering I could. This was a bad move on their part. I have no idea how to fold a flag. We were doubling over in laughter, Darla was crying from it! Not so appropriate for a time of respect, but even the staff found it amusing! I was on staff break in the evening which was great! Brian showed me some of the rides at six flags and we compared with Alton towers! He got the guitar out and we had a bit of a jam! Then Hayden showed up at the flaming window in the scariest mask ever to catch me off guard, it was terrifying and I’m definitely not speaking to him for a few days! He told me last week that it was his last day at camp and goodbye…only for me to find myself tripped up at breakfast by his big old feet! After this terrifying ordeal, Chloe and I pegged it back to cabins! As soon as I got in all I heard was ‘psssst, lora!’ and two of my campers are clustered around the sink, a comb well and truly WEDGED by Mackayla into Stacy’s hair! They were too frightened to do anything but had waited 2 hours for me to get back…and after an hour of trying I eventually got it out! What a relief! She was in tears ‘I don’t want bangs, I DONT WANT BANGS!’. I got a picture of the crazy knot – apparently they thought this would curl their hair. Poor girls! Oh and on a final note…just for laughs…there’s a girl this week called Sparkle. Her brother and sister are Sterling and Starlight. GENUINELY.

This week is really getting tough. Its the halfway point I guess so it’s gonna start hitting, but its difficult. It all kicked off this morning- I’ll spare the details, but theres a lot of drama between us cabin 10 counsellors. It has meant, though, that I’ve got out of break at MJ’s. After an exhausting week with exhausting people I hardly feel like exhausting myself more on the floor of the same person’s house with 6 others who aren’t my best friends and then having another equally exhausting week to follow! Me, Emma, James and Rach have been officially invited to stay at Jezzikas instead. I fully understand that I’ll probably still be sleeping on the floor, but avoiding co-counsellor issues wins it for me. Natalie is still gonna go because some of the programme staff she knows will be there, it’ll be sad to separate for the weekend again, but we’ve got next break planned together!  Argh!!! Anyway, I’m going to try and get over this stress in this next break…somehow…had my little cry with Nat and now its brave face for the kids! Full day 2: I was involved in their swimming and archery activites. They were hot. Suprisingly well behaved though. Evening programme was Princess night revisited. We watched the Princess and the frog this time which was a nice change! We had some more funny lines today: Jasmine asked me ‘Is England out of state?’…’yes…its in Europe’…’where abouts is that in America?’. OH MY DAYS they know nothing for 12 year olds! Another funny one was during club times, speaking to a little girl Haley she was telling me about her boyfriend (a few years older supposedly in cabin 1)…except she couldn’t remember what his name was! We had a shockingly lovely time in our cabin devotions this evening. Reading my personal devotion in the morning it had been about being a daughter of a king – so a princess (see it fitting in with princess night!) so I shared that with them. Then every single one of them had a prayer request to share with a group! I was so taken aback! Afterwards a lovely camper of mine Yesinia showed me a poem she’d written. It was really sad but so touching, and she wanted to talk about her dad, who lost his battle with cancer only two weeks ago. She’s been having some really encouraging dreams and visions which is so awesome to hear, she’s so amazingly positive considering how hard it must have been, and what a short time ago. I’ve met some warriors this summer! While we were waiting for the girls to stop ‘whispering’ (I had to yell at Jasmine for climbing on the roof) me and leeandra had fun making robot noises with the fan and had a great chat about books and life and church and stuff…mixing the immature with the mature. Nice end to a rollercoaster day! Day 3/Lord’s day: The service was nice again, and right after we prayed that the weather would just change from the horrid heat – God opened up the heavens and it’s been chucking it down ever since, yay I spent my break planning the long break with Jezzika and Emma, we’re thinking mall, movies, beach (she lives right next to New London beach!) and other fun things! Really looking forward to it! Swimming was cancelled due to rain so I supervised gaga with Em and Ruth. The rest of the day was the best time we’ve had all week! We had a hilarious time in nature with Ros – we caught this monster of a frog, and, after 8 of them had managed it…they persuaded me to kiss this frog on the lips! Juust incase anything happened like the film last night – it seemed too good to be true :p Prince Naveen, however, was not hiding in the shape of a frog for me, he remained slimy and blank looking! The whole cabin had a lot of fun though, and thoroughly creeped Leeandra out! After dinner we had CARNIVAL! Woo, it was even more fun than last week! When Emma was dunked James and I stole a shoe of hers each and managed to hide them for hours! Snow cones, corn dogs (eurgh) and popcorn returned, but this time we had MUSIC! Ha, there is this Christian band that do ‘God covers’ for popular songs, so we had their lyrics to Kesha’s tik tok, Katy Perry’s firework, amongst some of our other faves! We learnt a lot of American party dances too, so much fun, and at the end us staff had a dougie dance off = AMAZING time! During staff break we continued the fun, at midnight in the pitch black Emma, in a moment of frustration, threw Jamie’s frozen corn dog in the air – it landed, stuck, in the tree above! That led for a fun time retrieving it! Its a shame, but this weeks campers are finally starting to show some personality! I learnt a fun clapping game at dinner ‘tarzan the  monkey man’, Ariona showed us her baby dinosaur/bunny catching walk, and Taylor didn’t realise Elvis was dead! They’re all being a bit of a nightmare tonight, but they’ll regret it in the morning when they’re cleaning up all of this chaos!

opening day was the 2^nd hottest day of the year in Connecticut so far. It was awful, from breakfast we were sweating bucket loads and we still have to wear the stupid t shirts even though already we have 5 people down with sun stroke!!! Its made for an interesting day with our new campers. We only have 11 this time round, which you’d think would be easier…but no, we can already see we’ve got some real characters! One girl, after I’d just told her she wasn’t allowed snacks and we would have to confiscate them, came and ate a sandwhich right in front of me…of course I told her off and took it…but then it turned out that she had loads, threatened me that she has snacks in the night so she’ll wake me up to get them. I told her straight that I’m a heavy sleeper so she couldn’t even get them if she tried. It also turned out that she’d brought 3 mobile phones (presumably in case I confiscated one she could have the others) which they are not allowed under any circumstances! I’m annoyed her mum has sent her with these explicit instructions to beat the system, urghhhh! I felt pretty good taking them to the office safe anyway, they’re not getting past me! Because it was so hot people were so sluggish and I had a full set of girls take the swim test! I have some nice campers amongst the horrors – actually the cousin of my week1 favourite Martina, Taylor, and really lovely girls Aspen and Ajah whose first time it is! We had the ropes course straight after lunch, it was so much fun, we ditched the climbing wall for a change and went into the shaded forest! Ariona did this hilarious leap to try and get onto a rope and completely missed which had me, Giezi and James in hysterics for the entire session, and hours after anyone brought it up since! She didn’t hurt herself don’t worry! The boys made me take part fully this week (MJ and Leeandra never will!) as there was only 11 so I had a giggle on the tightrope walk! Cause the boys kept making me laugh so much I got across it by basically being thrown from side to side by them, and made it to the other side in probably the least graceful manner possible! Ooh, in contrast to first week’s crush on Rob, the 2^nd’s on James and Kevin (Bieber, and Chris brown/will smith), this week Hayden is the star attraction. Which he loves! On the plus this means we get extra lemonade at dinner just to fuel his ego, which we’re not complaining about In campfire we generally did the same as usual on opening night, skits, smores, songs, but this week I had to dance in ‘this is the way I love the Lord’ which involves going around the campers and staff requesting dance moves this meant mine were under close scrutiny! (hey *insert name*…hey what…are you ready…for what…to praise…praise who…praise the Lord…*everyone* Weeeeel my hands are high, my feet down low, this is the way I praise the Lord …*dance…praise the lorrrrd, praise praise the Lordddd*) Its all good fun! Some of the quotes we have from this week are just legendary! For starters, Leeandra makes me laugh more and more every day, I love that girl so much, Jamie was asking her to pass a pillow last night in the staff lounge and after about 5 times ‘whutttt?’ I passed him one. She turned to me afterwards; ‘I could have sworn he asked me if I was a Christian’. One of the girls has asked me what we’re doing and driving me crazy every second of the day! After every time she goes ‘what about princess night, is that now’, this morning I just flipped at her ‘it’s 9AM in the MORNING princess night is in the evening!’. Another one thought England was on the West coast of America. The same girl asked, in response to seeing a person at camp, why some people have disabilities? Before I even had a chance to get deep Taylor jumps in with the most profound thing I’ve ever heard from a 11year old; ‘Because God chose some people to be warriors’. I wanted to cry it was so unexpected and beautifully put!!! The morning of official day 1 we got to the flag first only to discover that they had decided the oldest group will always eat last indeterminate of whether they are first or last to the flag pole/ in cabin inspection. Our campers weren’t best pleased and I dread to see the state of their rooms and the time we get the outside in the morning! Despite this rocky start they did really well with orienteering. My team of Faye, Jera and Alexis found the smallest geocash about the size of a baby fingernail! Because of the heatwave (its 110…THE hottest day this year in CT…we just about died every 20mins, caked in sweat) afternoon programme was changed a lot. Boating was cancelled and the stayed in the water swimming a lot longer than usual. I made friends with some of the littlest ones in the water, one girl everyone has nicknamed ‘little snookie’, Ellen and Jamia are particularly cute! Instead of afternoon rotation they packed all the girls into the air conditioned lodge to play games which was lovely. Whilst this was on us cabin leaders for the girls met up to chat and go through whats working/not working etc. Which was a really great time to have with Emma, Jeana and Val! Because of its massive success last week, evening programme was ‘don’t forget the lyrics’ again! It wasn’t such a big hit as previously, there was a lot of hanging around and moody hot faces, but it was nice to do something with everyone, and who doesn’t like singing along to this weeks new category of ‘high school musical and camp rock’! Emma beat Chelsea in a sing off at the end which was good fun! Me and Natalie were on staff break together tonight which was fun Nick ate a burger with a spoon, we laughed at daily mail headlines, James made more people feel insecure i.e I have a nervous laugh, Natalie has a funny coloured forehead. The usual. I’m very excited for my 9-12 break tomorrow! I’m going to be away from the kids for the full time, not picking up slack from Mj, I’m just gonna do it, INTERNET AND SLEEP!

Last full day was really cute, Our girls performed their acoustic version of pink, its so sweet how they’ve created a band, I’ll try and upload to facebook – they’re really amazing! They also performed their beautiful sacred dance devotions with them have been nice, as was archery and arts and crafts today. I made harry potter glasses in arts and crafts ready for our viewing, and also a bunch of flower rings for some of the leaders. Think I have a career in pipecleaner jewellery, might expand into actual jewellery An entire table of paint collapsed and spilt all over  Tajhanae which was greattttt, luckily she had been painting her shirt anyway! During break me and Giezi have started a fly killing competition. Between us we got 8 this afternoon, morbid you might say, but literally at any one moment there will be at least 20 on a table, 6 on each leg or arm WHEREVER you are, and even crawling through your hair. It’s driving everyone crazy, apparently there is some sort of fly invasion in Connecticut…genuinely! But they also told us a tornado would hit on last day, which turned out to miss us completely with us having only 2 light showers! We had so much unnecessary prep and had to watch Rango instead of our talent show (it’s an awful film in my opinion) just in case. Our cabin got in a lot of trouble in the morning, but that’s a bit of a long story. Brianna wrote me a story which set me in better spirits, about what a great counsellor I am, naturally :p. Heidi taught me the cup clapping song we play every day at breakfast properly, and I’m finally getting the hang of it! *tap tap tap, clap clap, tap, grab, place, clap, grab, touch, tip, touch, place, slam, place*. Ruth squeezed Liz, Mary, Rach, Sami and I in her car during our night off to make a trip to dunkin’ donuts. It was so good, and a proper last day celebration! There are more dunkin’ donuts in America it seems than any other food chain! The kids went home with many tears and scraps of paper containing facebook addresses on the Tuesday morning. One girl particularly covered me in snot and eye juice. Slightly different timetable to the last camp when they went the evening before, but this was for the best I feel! I hope all of my campers manage to get jobs at Camp Connri next summer, they’d all really benefit themselves and others from working here in some capacity, seeing as they are no longer young enough to be campers! One of their Dad’s said I looked like Miley Cyrus! I was well chuffed! The afternoon was amazing – we FINALLY GOT TO SEE HARRY POTTER! Fortunately there was a screen that fitted all 32 of us international and staying staff in! It was hilarious, and it was a great audience, clapping and wooing at any occasion! The cinema seats in America are amazing, they recline and tip so you can squeeze in for people to pass by! So comfy! Poor Chelsea and Julia were bawling their eyes out and felt very offended by the end (they haven’t read the books) which was hilarious for us to witness! There was one moment that reminded us of the staff lounge, the grindylows the millions of flies that chill in there on the sofas! And Congrats to Harry and Ginny on another, even more awkward-looking, kiss! Afterwards we all went to chilli’s for a meal We did 2 for $20 so me and James paired up for a starter and some massive fajita main! (everyone joked the entire way through that we should just get a bowl of gravy…har har, the token mancunians!…we even went for the meal in Manchester Connecticut) It was a meal of non-stop laughing and we basically took up the whole restaurant in our little tables of four and tales of unfortunate injuries! Our waitress Pam/Ham kept us happy and laughing all night! On the way back we stopped in at Walmart. I finally bought a new watch (apparently my old one was not waterproof!) in the form of a $3 barbie one, and Rach and I found some interesting looking makeup! It was our weekly pj party in the late evening with a TV fest and snoozaloozing! On our full day of break, it was too hot to do anything and there was zero food in the place! In a second outside we felt disgusting and me and Emma basically made her a scrap book for most of the day! I read a bit and played some pool, anything we could do in front of the fan! The forecast for this week looks terrifying – over 100 farrain height every day! Don’t know how we’re gonna survive in our staff t shirts in all of these open air activities! In the evening our devotions were good, good to catch up with my group and good entertainment! There was a massive massive moth, bigger than anything I have ever seen! The body itself was the entire length of my hand , its width the size of two fingers! The wing span was massive! It was flying everywhere, girls wer running and screaming, boys were jumping up to catch it – eventually james caught it (James and the giant moth har har har) and we had to begin our discussions :p We’ve got a trip planned to six flags theme park in the process at the moment with everyone, can’t wait! And MJ’s invited us to stay at hers next week! Me and Brian learnt a secret handshake in staff snacks, Emma practised her ‘rachel’ walk, and we generally got ready for tomorrows events! Cabin 10 had another hyper night…we might be a bit worse for wear now, but bring it on service unit camp!

Day 1 morning (goodness knows what actual day it is, Saturday maybe) my alarm went off right in the middle of an amazing dream about me being in a Bollywood photo shoot! I bounded up full of energy cause of my lovely campers and had them up, showered, tidy and ready for flag raising in 35minutes! SCOREEEE! We were first there so first for breakfast which meant we got out earlier to sit on the deck and listen to some of the girls play mcfly and kings of leon on guitar (there are people this week who like music other than rap! I told you right, that MJ had never heard of Kings of Leon? THEY’RE AMERICAN and she’s MY AGE!) The girls were awesome anyway! In the afternoon it was pointed out to me that I actually have a half-tan :s. Because we sit on kayaks for most of  the day the back of my legs are so pale, so this week the girls have been on ‘tan-watch’ making me turn my back to the sun at every available moment, what are campers for, eh! Leeandra, in despair of not being able to remember a new set of names, has nicknamed all our campers this week by their many allergies. We have a juicy, a fruity, a milky, a bandy and a meds so far, I’m surprised at how I’m doing namewise so far, but can see myself resorting to similar in a few weeks time!!! I’ve been teaching them about my being mancunian, except when I first said ‘Mancunian’ they thought I said ‘Monkey-Indian’ so thats the sign they’ve written for my door :p The afternoon was SO busy, they were awesome at Netball (you can tell basketball is BIG at their schools), it was roasting so in the lake we had a full set of girls swimming, we found ALL our geocash (including one hidden in a fake rock next to a stream we never knew existed the other end of the site) in orienteering, and thrashed the boys from cabin 2 in Gaga! Evening programme day one was wicked, ‘Don’t forget the Lyrics’! Each cabin took forward a leader and camper to fill in lyric gaps in one of the following catagories: Disney, Glee, Praise songs and Mystery (camp Connri songs)! Me and Chey ROCKED IT with Beauty and the beast, New York, Above all and BUBBLEGUM CABIN 10 WON!!! Natalie’s not in a happy place atm so she took my night break that night, if you could please pray for her friend back home in hospital I know she’d massively appreciate that! Me and MJ had a good long time to help our campers prep for the pirate night, made eye patches out of safety masks etc.  As always, this led to a hyper half hour of wimoweh and other LOUD songs before devotions OoH day 1 we won first to flag, cabin inspection, and best behaviour for dinner= we ate first for all three meals. SEE HOW MUCH BETTER MY CAMPERS ARE THIS WEEK! (Still love my last week girls though as I keep reminding them when they join our cabin every day) Day 2 seemed like it was the length of about 3 days! I was a shoulder for most of it – as it was the Lord’s day we had a Sunday service, and 8 of my campers broke down in tears. I’m so touched they had such a strong reaction to the message, ones asked to come to church and 2 more committed their lives to God! When the rest when back to the cabin I spoke to 2 of the girls, Jacquelynn and Bryanna, who wanted to chat through some stuff. If you could remember these two girls in your prayers I know they’d feeling so loved to be remembered across an entire ocean, they’ve got more to deal with than any 15 year old should have to! Ruth, one of my favourite domestic staff, was also incredibly touched by the service and would appreciate prayer, as would Rach, for knowing how loved and sorted they are with God! Back in the Cabin we were having British day (aka all the girls are copying my accent/ everything I do and even ate bacon with a knife and fork!) with the exception of one half hour where the girls taught me to ‘dougie’, the big dance move in America! It was a good laugh and raised everyones spirits after the tears! Heidi’s brought her guitar out for a few singalongs the last few days, her and Arnell did an amazing rendition of Pink’s ‘perfect’ after watching the music video in the service, they’re going to perform in the talent show! We had nature in the heat wave that has struck New England. This made the nature walk slightly less fun, however Shauntil slipping straight into the stream is an image I’ll carry for a long time! The evening was the BEST EVENING PROGRAMME WE HAD YET! Pirate night It was so much fun dressing up and making gifts for the pirates. Although all the pirates (the lifeguards) seemed to like our gifts – it didn’t stop them swinging a counsellor from each cabin into the lake my their ankles!!! I ran so far across the muddy beach but eventually James and Elizabeth floored me and in I went, taking them down with me of course ;p. Got some fab pictures from the night but it doesn’t do it justice! We even managed to get a few of our favourite campers thrown in. Such a great night! All of us staff were drenched but had the time of our lives, we made incredible pirates!!!

Son of a silk milk, I LOVE MY NEW CAMPERS We were so nervous about these slightly older ones but they’re AMAZING! They are ready BEFORE US at every chance today, waiting on the deck before we have to shout them! They walk at a regular pace, they’re enthusiastic and all give it a go! At meal times they make conversation, and really intelligent conversation too; at campfire I had a really interesting chat with Cheyenne and Heidi about tax rates in states! They’re a much more mixed group and know what they’re all about. They’re mature enough to get on with the camp programme and with each other, despite obvious clashes of interests! I cannot believe it after my nightmare week. I walked back from meds to find Arnelle sweeping the floor voluntarily, while the rest were all showered and in bed before curfew!!! On another note today, our last week campers returned but were split up into different cabins. Because its teen camp they’re now the babies, and not liking it so much. So far Ashley, Shyleese, Allana, Daisy, Mahogany and Connie have all come up to me asking if they can come back into our cabin! After a day with some of the other counsellors, they can see they had it pretty good with us last week :p Martina came and sat with my group during swimming, I think shes missing our group a lot, but got on great with my lovely girls so it was nice to include her! They all came back with new haircuts and weaves so it feels like my babies have gone and grown up, returning a year or so later and I can see how they got on…but really its been 2 days!!! So instead of wanting to mope around the cabin these girls want to be active and moving I took them down to the gaga pit in CDA to play with one of the boy groups, we did the ropes course again with James and Giezi. This was so much fun with actual participators, the boys couldn’t believe the difference in our new oldest group! We managed to get 7 across the ‘lava lake’! One girl in particular has gotten really good at a british accent! She sounds kinda Cockney which is weird as me and James are both mancunian, but she’s doing a decent Natalie, and hasn’t stopped since! Yeah these girls LOVE hearing about England, and are asking loads of interesting questions, more inspired to travel etc. So glad, as this is ultimately what this cultural exchange is all about! They are really all so lovely, I want them every week! Tomorrow, cause they’re a bit miffed about not getting athletics time, I’ve booked a slot with Eddie to teach them Rounders, and they’ve been begging to play Netball after learning about it last year, so that’ll be a great start to the day tomorrow! Also, my break is carefully scheduled around missing our boating session, so whether this lot decide they fancy Rob or not, I’m not dealing with it This evening camp fire was great fun, learnt even more new songs and we did new sketches, loving the enthusiasm from all of these girls its rubbed off onto me and Leeandra and we’ve got a fun hyper night in store

Staff break was sooo much needed!!! Tuesday Nat and I naturally woke up at 8, to find that James and Eddie did too – we went for a rummage in the industrial fridge to discover that our breakfast was gonna have to be a bread roll and milk cartons! Its a good job we were up that early though, after not too long Fei shouted over the camp intercom (love that thing…’attention Camp Connri, attention’) that there was a Walmart trip in 10mins…my flip flops had broken! It was so funny, we obvs being the only ones up, managed to bag seats in the van, but watching the other 14 coming run across the grass putting on mascara and pulling up pants was priceless! After walmart we went for a Chinese buffet altogether which was lovely! Then we went to the MALL where I went a bit crazy after a year of hardly shopping! I bagged a Hollister hoodie for $18! Some Jellies for $12, fancy sandals for $10! A American Eagle baseball cap for only $7!!!!!!! (I love it, to think I was gonna spend $34 on a Phillies one!) I bought a top for David for $?? From Hot topic, a really cool shop, and a dress from the shop everyones told be I embody: Forever 21, which was lovely Some of the girls got mani’s and pedi’s, but most of us shopped it out for the day Theres this WEIRD trend here where everyone wears SOCKS with these slip on addidas SANDALS! It looks insane to us brits who have it written on our brains that one should never wear socks and sandals…but they can’t understand why and laugh at our wearing flip flops!? In true emma style, she bought some adiddas slip on’s :p When we got back we all chilled together and watched Pocahontas (because apparently I look like her and Emma is my racoon…but neither of us had seen it!) and followed it with tangled, yes, again, but we love it…even the boys J The next day we didn’t go anywhere. We had to rummage through the fridges to find anything we could eat; breakfast=a bread roll and milk, lunch=slices of ham, American cheese and milk. It was so hot though we weren’t really focussed on our stomachs! In the morning me, Nat and Emma hit the pontoon for some sunning. After only 20 minutes Emma was red as a lobster with the most hilarious tan lines ever, and has spent the rest of the weekend indoors trying to cool it before the domestic staff come and see tomorrow! The sight of that burn in her socks and sandals just makes anyone crack up! Me, James, Jenna, Eddie and Chloe went out on the kayaks for the whole afternoon and invented some pretty cool games standing up on them in the water J Katelyn and her friend came down for a bit and made up a chant with me ‘you swam around snake island, and now you’re back, yay yay!’ for Jenna and James who managed it! Thats a 50minute fast swim!!! In the evening some of the domestic staff arrived back early cause the programme staff need to show the area’s salvation army officers what they’ll be doing eith their kids next week. This meant that we managed to persuade Rob to get us some mcdonalds in his van!!! Finally we got to eat, I just got 12 chicken nuggets and because of some crazy deal or something, with a large coke it only came to $3! That eve we watched Harry Potter to get us, if possible, more pumped for next weekend! I was unfortunately sat in between the biggest haters ever Emma and Giezi (who has never read/seen it…I know right!) which made it not as good as my usual viewings. On the way back to the cabins I fell over AGAIN and re-grazed myself in the exact same place I have done 3 times now. There is something so wrong with me. We had a SLEEPOVER in Emma’s kids cabin that night. So much fun but we were asleep pretty instantly. It was Me, Nat, Jenna, Emma and Jenna (our girl group but missing Rach who is in Florida visiting family, the lucky thing!) ‘roll of fat on his head!?’ – Jenna. I had a dream that I was in Philly with Chloe looking at cat postcards to send to Granddad! Haha! Our last day off (I’m just gonna call it Sunday, even though its Thursday, but as far as we’re concerned its our weekend…the shops are just quieter) we didn’t do much at all! Sunbathed with Sarah and Chloe, skyped mum and David which was great J For lunch they did a bbq for the salvation army officers visiting (there were loads!) so we got some of the leftovers, lots of watermelon J And for tea, for helping out they cooked us some scrummy chicken and onions and mushrooms! It was nice to spend time with the international counsellors as a smaller group without the programme staff (they were showing people around their activities)! Played a bit of volleyball, then it got chilly so we watched avatar! ‘what would you do if you gave birth to an avatar’ – Natalie. All week James, Giezi and Brian have been getting me with some circle thing – like, they say ‘whats over there’ pointing, and they show a circle, and when I look they get to punch me. So I’ve finally got the hang of this and have been able to rest my bruises today by ACTUALLY GETTING THEM BACK. I’m feeling quite proud of myself J Post-punches and chilling all the domestic staff arrived back and we had devotions as a full team again. Apparently we’re in the same group every week, I’m glad I know now so its not overwhelming every time I’m asked on the spot to lead a group! It was nice to chat to those guys again, and we continued it afterwards in the staff lounge. Me and Jenna walked back to bed singing our mate Cody Simpson, its been a week since we last did, right about time for a revival! If you could please pray for our teen camp this week I’d really appreciate it! I’m a bit apprehensive about the 16 and 17year olds my cabin’s getting, or quite what a week without music activities will hold! No-ones even given me a programme yet which I’m stressing a bit about, and I can’t think of any conversations these kind of teenagers will appreciate…so please pray I’ll just wake up in the morning every day with some crazy inspiration!

Show days Arts show was so much fun; our choreodrama had a great reception, everyone was killing themselves laughing! Felt like a proud momma with my girls performing too, they all did a fab job with their sacred dances and dramas J Afterwards Nat and Leeandra were on evening break so me and MJ had the chance to have a proper heart to heart which was much needed and about time too! It was a great evening and we were still up and hyped by the time the other two were back from staff break. We had a mad hour of acting like glow worms and making Harleys – in the end just about everyone in the cabin, not just our girls, were awake until 3, but we only had one night after that with them so it was a lot of fun for us all! They weren’t too worse for wear Sunday morning; it is the Lord’s day so we got a lie in until 7.00AM anyway J several of my girls put their hands up during the morning service to say that they accept Jesus which was encouraging, even though they’re too tough to talk about it – something must be getting through to them The funniest thing about this week has probably been the fact that every single day this week we have cleaned and tidied so much to try and win cabin inspection – every day we get 22/25, 23/25, them get to 24/25…we never win, even though looking at other cabins theirs are much, much messier than ours! We gave up this morning and didn’t even make our beds…what score do we get? 25/25. Might have something to do with Becki trying to make it up to MJ for the argument they had yesterday either way, our girls aren’t gonna be putting in much effort with cleaning next week after what they learnt from the scoring system!!! Oh yeah, because its teen camp next week a lot are coming back! Only, next week they’ll be the babies in cabin 5&6 and i’ll have even more terrible teenagers age 16 *shudder*. I’ll miss music camp a tiny bit – like the walking between activities and there’s just random kids sat in the forest playing horns and stuff J I’ll not miss the impossibly busy schedule mind! As we’ve learnt this week though; *singing* ‘with Jesus we can do the impossible…’. what a great song As we don’t have any other music at camp these songs seem to stick in our head for dayssss, I think I’ll know the words to the camp Connri song for the rest of my life!!! That afternoon the girls from cabins 5, 7 and then Allana, Martina, Shynia and I who didn’t fancy boating like the rest of our group (thanks to their crush on Rob we now have to do it every day and I need a break from hearing about him to be honest!) challenged Nick in gaga ball. It was so funny, the girls had this hilarious chant ‘slice that pork chop be the knife’ much to Nick’s annoyance J They now call him Pork Chop, apparently Jamie looks like Peter Pan so thats his name, Giezi is his tinkerbell and James is ‘like a stretched out Justin Bieber’ haha. Sunday evening we had campfire vespers which was a lovely time for us to sing and the kids to stand up and shout prayer requests. It was really touching and so many of the kids were confident and involved! If you’re able can you please remember my camper Martina’s dad in your prayers, their family would really appreciate it. As it was my evening off I got to go to the once a week staff vespers which they organise, with Leeandra. It was so nice to chill and pray together with the other staff after so long! After that we went back to the staff lounge and maxxed out our staff snacks allowance for the week – I carried back as many cans of ice tea for Nat as humanly possible (that is 12 individual ones, not a crate), but Leeandra woke up this morning to find that a mouse had already started on the snacks she’d saved :p Another animal friend for us! Today the kids have been packing which has been surprisingly sad! I had 3 of them braid my hair (I can’t get much more ghetto now!) and we went back to see the BABY BUNNIES Kevin and his kids nearly ran over yesterday while we were at the swings with them! Today we had CARNIVAL which was amazing fun! We had a dunk tank and the girls had a great time drenching james again, and again, and again!!! They all got prizes which was lovely as well, the kids with the best behaviour getting to picked first which was justice done in our cabin!!! We took a group pic and took everyone down for the finale show. It was beautiful seeing what everyone had achieved, and all the special awards were sweet! Our chorus even sounded better than usual, although Jamie and I had very little space to sway…right on the edge of the stage, so our faces probably looked a little stiff! Martina, bless her hear, left me note saying how much she was gonna miss me which was so sweet, and much appreciated after a week of drama from the rest of the girls! The worst thing happned though JUST after the concert as they were about to leave – Shynia and some of the others had begged me to go back to see the bunny burrow, so we RAN there. Only, when we got there, Francisco had literally just RUN OVER the burrow in his lawnmower!!! It was devastating and I had 4 crying teenagers as We rescused the one remaining baby alive. It was horrible. Why its mother decided to build their home right in the middle of a fild I’ll never know L. Got a few pictures with baby bunny before we left it where its mother was last seen, but the tears from the bunny and then the actuality of leaving their friends meant that every single one of my girls was in floods! What an ending! I was almost in floods myself tonight as I sat in my group of friends and could not remember to hold an adult conversation anymore! Hopefully I’ll return to being a social butterfly in the morning! Early night for Lora and Natalie, we get alone time with eachother now our roomies are also home! So looking forward to having our space back!!!

Day 4 and 5 Two of our girls were accepted into the talent show last night, wooo! Go Connie and Martina! One did a fab dramatic reading, the other sang beautifully – cabin 10 was very well represented In the short time before break when I went to get my staff snack James and Nat were deciding who everyone would be as an animal: Nat would be a feminine and headstrong cat, Eddie would be a wise and strong elephant, Jamie a tall giraffe, James a zebra (mainly cause his hair just kinda makes him look like one I think), Sami is a merecat due to his small and involved manner, Manni a crazy and boisterous lion, apparently I’m a social butterfly and wearer of bright colours, Jenna is an athletic and elegant gazelle. That might give you some insight into what some of my friends here are like lol. It was so good to have a short break that evening and spent a good time chatting to Rach, Giezi, Nick, James and Kelly. In my break today also, Jezzika invited me and Emma to stay at her house in New London (near the beach!) one staff break J We had a really funny afternoon today beginning with Mahogany sitting on her butter at lunch. We then returned to the cabin to find a SQUIRREL had run into 10a – they learnt their lesson to shut the door behind them! Someone ran to get Ros from her nature activity and we waved broom handles around the room and finally managed to escourt our friend named ‘kenan’ (I think thats Tiasjah’s brother’s name) back outdoors! Great snacks of grilled cheese and snowcones followed by actually having our nature session – Once again, they really surprised me with how much they like the activities I most expect them to loathe! Between 9 of us we caught 6 frogs (4 different species), dug for  worms and I even cast off an amazing fishing line with the rod! When I tried to repeat it however, I managed to get it stuck in the tree above me…Ros climbed it barefoot (shes our own tarzan) to rescue it as the next thunder storm was brewing! The girls love watching their counsellors fail so that put them in a really good mood the rest of the day :p Me and Allana invented a game with rocks while the others were on the swings which ended up with me basically getting stoned, but it showed how resourceful they can be when they try something other than sitting around in the cabins all day, which is what they seem to want to do all the time! We’ve got to prepare for the arts show tonight now, but will try and get all three of these last posts online before I tell you how the show went! Its impossible to try and get each up as it happens, the breaks fly by without trying to get onto the internet! Just expect 4 at a time as and when you read them

Day 2 and 3. Getting much better despite tension between mj and myself. There are more good times than down times of course but I need to spill the bad first. More stress; for starters, two girls had a fist fight in the night with one being sent home tomorrow. Fabulous. Ones been bullying a girl in another cabin which has led to a massive feud beween 9 and 10. Brilliant.  I haven’t had a proper break in 3 days, MJ keeps falling asleep during the kids siesta and leaving me, going off to talk on the phone, or just not turning up so I can’t even go on the break. Yesterday, typically, during my break time there was another freak storm (obviously not blaming MJ for this one) I was stuck AGAIN in the Nature lodge, with Barri and Liz meaning that because this took up choreodrama time and because of our imminant show, I had to miss more of my break in a make-up session. Because one of the kids didn’t realise they were actually off site for a wedding for Saturday’s performance of it, I’ve ended up having to take his main part last minute – I am now the ‘light’ while Rob is the ‘voice’ in the Lion King. :s We had to get rescued in the car because the whole field leading up to the barn became too boggy to walk on. Tomorrow I don’t care what kinda trouble they’re having with the girls, I need to just sit in the staff lounge with adults/alone for half an hour!!!  Leeandra’s being really helpful, especially in prep for our international night tonight (we’re doing Italy with me and Puerto Rico for herself with the girls) Had princess night last night which was really fun, we watched tangled with all the girls and had people doing hair and nails J I had 4 girls trying to style my hair, it hurt, but with tangled on, I had as close to rapunzel length hair as they could find! At the start me and a few other girls had to go up because we knew the words and perform the starting song :p The girls, as expected from teenagers, are being really fussy with food. We have bacon and waffles/French toast fingers/pancakes every morning (yeah, so unhealthy, my skin’s in pain, but thats the norm here) but other than that, mealtimes are fun. None of us are allowed to refuse food, but we’re always so hungry after all we’ve done that we’ll eat anything, especially the chocolate milk with every single meal! I got laughed at today for eating my bacon with a knife and fork – Allana brought it up, and looking around I literally was the only person not picking it up with my fingers. Just can’t bring myself to do it though. They also don’t understand when I say ‘pardon?’ when I can’t make out what they’re saying! They’re like ‘just say “what” like us!’ but I don’t want to get into the habit of that for coming back home, I really like British manners! Oh, and speaking to Kelly and Jacob last night on my evening off, they don’t recycle here!!!! Crazy waste! Some of the girls are just hilarious – Kelsea or Chelsea (we have 2 sets of IDENTICAL twin girls in out cabin which is really confusing) asked me yesterday whether, because my eyes are green, do I see things slightly green!? She’s 14!!! She also accused me of sounding ‘like a white girl’…I had to remind her that I actually am. Apparently I don’t seem like it though, which also apparently makes me cool with them. Its hard trying to keep up! J Had my first 2 choreodrama classes which are hilarious. Me, Barri, Giezi, Rob, Manni and JP twirl ribbons around in a circle, occasionally holding hands – and only 4 kids are even signed up to the class, one of which is Caleb!!! We’re dancing to a song from the lion king 2, the guys can’t wait to perform :p The other sessions are okay but we’re not as much involved. Me and Taylor are supervising timbrels and just kinda help where necessary, and in chorus, as you can imagine I just sit and sing with Jamie and Giezi! We had a lot of drama yesterday despite it being better; one girl told her cousin (a junior counsellor here at camp) about something another of our girls had said. This meant the jc went mad at my jc and within minutes the chief counsellor was involved, crying, the girls cussing, ones bags packed and running! In true girl style, it was over about an hour later. Today another of my girls has had to be in isolation with the nurse because of pink eye, constant stress! Much to our surprise, they absolutely loved going on the boats yesterday afternoon! Those who didn’t want to get wet didn’t have to, the peddle boats make sure of that, and the rest of the girls loveddddd ‘accidentally’ falling off the kayaks to try and get Rob to come and save them! All we’ve heard about since is Robbie so booked in an extra boating session this afternoon during CDA – it’s nice to finally have something fun that they all actually agree on and want to participate in, whatever their motivation is J Mahogony did a rather spectacular ‘fall’ and has been talking about it to anyone who will listen ever since :p Rob held her hand! Martina finally braved going on not only a peddle boat but a kayak with me, which is a massive deal, so proud of her! Because they were extra helpful carrying stuff away after boating (I wonder why) we FINALLY weren’t last, but first to queue for food at dinner…we continued our streak by being 3^rd to arrive to Flag raising, and 2^nd in the Cabin inspection! We’re getting more used to eating our food early so hopefully we’ll keep up this kind of winning! Today I’m absolutely knackered – last night there was a MASSIVE thunderstorm and 4 of our 13 year olds were in floods for most of the night. The thunder here is so loud, the cabin walls were shaking, it felt like a train was running right on top of the cabin, first time I heard it I even cried out for Natalie! One of them thought the trees were falling on top of the cabin, bless her, it really was that loud! The weathers been so hot recently a storm was bound to come soon, but its back to hot again already. I’ve got a great tan even on this 3^rd week in, and my hair’s gone really light! We’re just never in the shade at all, wonder what I’ll look like by the end of the summer!!! This afternoon we had fun orienteering with steve, another activity MOST of the girls enjoyed more than expected! Although Martina, Shyleese, kelsea and I didn’t manage to actually find any geocash, apparently we got very close! This evening’s been quite stressful and my co-counsellors have just been disappearing all over the show all day. I genuinely feel like I became a single parent overnight for 16 14 year olds. Getting really annoyed again, but I’ve got the feeling by this point this is the usual feeling I’m going to have at the end of a day. If it lasts much longer I’m just gonna have to man up and hold a meeting, but I don’t want more tension than there already is at this point. Roll on staff break, can’t wait to see my friends again; I get the briefest moments with them in the activities they lead, or me and emma see eachother as counsellors if we can try and navigate our positions to the front of one line, and the back of another before dinner! Can’t wait to spend longer that 20mins speaking to her, Nat, Rach, Jenna, James, etc. At dinner you just see all our faces pining after eachother, especially us counsellors! As funny as the kids conversations sometimes are, after a full day of it constantly meal times is such a valuable time to just sit and reflect…until someone spills a pitcher of ice that is! You can buy ice here…I asked one of the girls how you make ice…she said you don’t make it, you buy it. Oh dear. Also, none of them actually know where England is on a map, nevermind Italy; they’re getting an education from me this week if its the last thing I do!!!

Kids arrived today. Nightmare day really, had a little cry during the campfire so only Nat and James could see, but the first day really was just that much of a shock! I expected kids different to those in Europe, and had surrendered to not knowing much about LEADING teenage girls, but it was just totally nothing I could have prepared for. I’m super glad I’m here and love my international family, but first day of it all had just about all us newbies in shakes and tears. The girls look years older than me, and have the attitude of 20 of 14 year old me (yes Mum, honestly). Already we’ve had 2 walkers, sneaking into the boys cabin plotted, bug spray purposely sprayed into another girls eye (yes, trouble followed), bullying of cabin 9, all of them wanting to go to the nurse for the most ridiculous made up reasons, and they just don’t want to participate at all! Its hard to get into the mindset that they’re all here for free, unlike most other Camp America camps, its Salvation Army, however when walking around today – they wouldn’t take part in anything! Only 2 out of my 16 would go in the water, only 5 would go on the climbing wall. It didn’t help that my co-counsellor didn’t want to either – stating that ‘nobody had to do anything in America’, just the right encouraging attitude to have. Tension being Cabin Leader. The kids seem to take it so much for granted, and where I love doing everything and playing games and trying new things, they just want to sit and moan and talk about each other! I’m quite jealous of all the other leaders with younger ones, they seem to have so much more energy while this negativity in cabin 10 is drainingggggg! I want a chance to play all the games we’ve learnt! Our activities for opening day were swim tests, which as you can tell, were disastrous, and then ropes with James and Giezi. All my group decided they HATE james, they were so rude and as his first day and only group he was pretty thrown too by their not wanting to do anythingggg. Despite their general rudeness, they can be nice girls, and theres stuff to talk about. They’re friendly and love talking about England. On the up, everyone is feeling the same to some extent. I had my first properrr smore around the camp fire tonight. Everyone enjoyed the songs, and our skits were a big hit. Prayers for patience and the ability to chill would be much needed: apparently rules are not as important to all counsellors as they are to me, which is stressing me out a little bit, don’t like working without a plan!!! At each meal one of the staff kids has come to sit at my table though which has been nice to have a positive boost and a bit of normality! Really appreciate those guys! Last night in preparation for this first day we were split into random devotion groups amongst the staff, I had to lead a lovely group of Kelly, Kevin, Leeandra, Ruth, and Ronshay which was really nice and got me prepped on how to relate stuff to a more similar age group. This will be helpful for tomorrow’s first cabin devotions, house group leader here I come :p yeah please pray for patience and chillability!!!

OH MAN its been a long time since writing, but orientation and now sharing a room with 3 other girls, hasn’t left much time! Also, Internet on camp has not been installed yet, so its grabbing office hours where possible to even sit at a computer! SO, Orientation week has been ROASTIN’ (Mykal has taught me this has a different meaning in America, shes teaching me loads J) In return, and after nat’s impression of a british ‘sneaker’ she’s started calling them trainers J. Yeah, Captain Dave does awesome devotions which we have every day and makes the sessions really fun and informative. Loadsa weird stuff involved though that I’ve never been taught with English youthwork; I now know all about blood borne pathogens, how to check for headlice, and how to successfully operate a bow and arrow. On Monday we practised team rotations, I was in charge of half of the girl staff, my first taste of power, I’ve been given a lot of important roles for some reason, clearly I appear more responsible than I was aware, which is taking some getting used to (I’m also a cabin leader and in charge of leading an art club). Rotations were really fun – we got a taste of each of the activities we’ll be doing; I’m pretty sick at volleyball serves, not so hot at getting a bullseye with archery, and we all had fun with nature, ropes course , orienteering, arts and crafts, and of course, boating. Some of the girls aren’t so enthusiastic about everything, but hopefully they’ll get more into it with the kids! I’ve yet to meet someone naturally brilliant at swinging across a forest on a rope, not even Team Rocket Giezi and James (rope course directors, ironically pokemon’s best) seem that confident, but we’ve all got to be willing to give it a try! I got about a quarter of the way across before ending up caked in mulch :p got my first cuts on the way back up, had to happen eventually! Oh the rest of the day was just hilarious, we practised some games we could play in our CDA time with our cabins, like shuffle buns, train, wookie, and did some AMAZING group charades. Our group did the most fantastic rendition of twilight, Mikey jumping over chairs, ripping off his top (and practically james…our Edward…’s neck) as Jacob to save our bella! I got accidentally floored by Jamie getting over-excited about being a vampire, but it was worth it for such a winning performance! after all this our teams (like girl counsellors, waterfront staff, programme staff etc.) got together individually to make skits for the campfire. This was one of the funniest nights of my life honestly, Inbetween each groups hilarious skit (especially the staff kids’!) we learnt campfire songs, Baby shark duh duhh duh duh duh duh our fave, love the Lord and Camp Connri official song etc! They even sing a different rythm (and additional verses) to boom chica boom over here! Devotion time got people emotional again, and me and emma have arranged before leading our own devotions, to try and meet up for some one-to-ones, getting the accountability time we’ve been craving!!! When it got practically too dark to see, we began a game of Capture the flag. It stretched over miles and got a bit over-ambitious but it was so fun. When tryna rescue Nat I got physically flipped onto the floor by Manni, more cuts to add to the collection, but was rescued twice by AJ and James after this, and from making my mistake of trying to free a member of completely the wrong team, and getting very easily caught it was a great way to get to know the domestic staff even more! Before bed Jenna and I got way too into the food channel and I had the weirdest dream that night; I got woken up from it JUST before my food was about to arrive at font back in Liverpool! Was well gutted, but a burrito lunch the next day and the promise of a Philly steak sandwhich at the weekend stopped the tummy rumbles! TUESDAY was another full and funny day. They all are really J Mealtimes were probably the funniest today though, at breakfast started to make really good friends with Giezi and Fransisco. They gave me, Jenna and Chloe our American names; Watermelandrea, friedchickeniqua and Shanaynay to combat some of the campers names that are in my cabin: I have arriving on Monday, a Symphony, a Majesty and a Mahogony…HAHAHAHA! Those guys are tryna ghetto me up so I can handle these girls, got my speak down now, its great being able to say my famous ‘sup’ every five seconds, but I can now also do a pretty convincing ‘yo’ and am trying not to lift up my baby finger while drinking. Its these little things that will apparently make me slightly more ‘roastin’’ :p Giezi’s been making my meals more terrifying ever since though, if I so much close my eyes for grace or stand up for a second, something has happened to my food! Natalie managed to sit at completely the wrong table without realising for about 10mins which was funny, the early mornings are getting harder. Now have about 6 milk cartons stored in our room from getting given them at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Craving some soda! At lunch James, Rach and I got some crazy song combination of Baby Shark, Bring it all back and Yeah yeah yeah, become our theme tune and secret handshake. We now also know every single line of our sung-grace before every meal, yay J its taken nearly 2 weeks but we can now get the 3^rd line DOWN! Had churo for afternoon snack, yum yum, lovely follow up from yesterday’s cheese filled pretzels J no weight gain worries though – we’re working too hard! In the afternoon we had Kayak races! Team Emmannuel (American Emmanuel not Manni), Eddie, James, Emma, Lora, Rach won by about a mile!!!! Woooo! Afterwhich me and Rach took the peddle boat for about a 2 hour cruise working those leg muscles, and testing Rob and Jenna’s muscles managing to haul it into the water on their own cruised to meet Ros on Snake Island and encouraged her and Steve’s wedding (what an amazing reunion for us guys :p) before heading back to prep for Crazy Olympics!  Crazy Olympics certainly got crazy, the games were not generic, one including lines involved me tripping over Nick and landing on top of James’ head. So glad it was him and not someone I’d only just met the last few days, but was still mortifying! Few more cuts and bruises. The male counsellors won the evening which we’re all still tryna live down! Today’s been the last day of Orientation and, because its BAND CAMP next week we’ve had a special orientation this week about whats going to be different; lots. For starters, on top of usual camp schedule we have to be involved in a MUSIC, ART anddddd CHORAL ENSEMBLE, one of eachhh, which for most of us is a bit of a stretch. Been placed to lead Choreodance for Arts which is very cool, interpretive story telling dance, with an entertaining team of Manni, JP, Rob, Giezi and Barri. Should be fun. I’m in the ‘hillside chorus’ for choral, eek, with the middle-age kids and Jamie. Musicwise its the best; I’m learning timbrels, some crazy tambourine things that involve hopping, with Em. Gonna be a blast!!! Jenna already said she’d record it for you guys to see J In the afternoon we had sunbathing and practise for a code one (missing camper) finding Plastic Oscar trophies, which, for the poor lifeguards, meant diving down to the bottom of the lake and doing a floor sweep. Jenna couldn’t even talk about the things she saw down there, Nat managed to avoid, but only cause she’s got swimmers ear L. For tea the divisional officers of the salvation army came to check out camp which was great and we had an even more spectacular tea to celebrate J only sad thing was, that the domestic staff leave to go home for the 4^th of July weekend and we had to plan our weekend! Us internationals have been craving time together for so long again, me and Nat were so excited to have some chat time in our room tonight that we’ve been counting down the half-hours since breakfast J Rach is also glad to get away from her nightmare roommate, so we all had a pj party and game night in the staff lounge! Only problem of the evening was…we had to book our weekend plans. Emma, Jamie and Manni are all staying with various family over this holiday, so no massive group trip was every gonna happen without some of our faves, but me and Jenna didn’t want to waste our longest set of days off, and are still taking the oppourtunity to travel to Philadelphia for the next 3 nights! WOOOO! We’ve got a great plan sorted for only an hour on the internet and have lots of ideas planned including seeing Liberty bell, a baseball game, Sesame street world, Amish country, Hershey factory and theme park, the \rocky steps and some Philadelphia cheese man! We’re looking forward to telling the story of how a brit and an aussie ended up in an American hostel J Some of the others have decided to do sorta one-day breaks not going too far, which suits them better. Me and Nat have arranged to send postcards as soon as we arrive though so we can read them at breakfast together next week, gonna miss eachother a bit too much! 5hours of sleep before Lora Wilkinson and Jenna Neilson hit up Philly though, WOOOOO!

Its not rained English rain the last few days; we’ve seen rain New England Style! Handyman steve says Weds and Thurs were only ‘showers’ however the bucketloads were some of the worst weather I’ve seen in my life! On the plus side, that means the workload’s ever so slightly lighter! Wednesday we cleaned the pavilion, did another walmart trip to stock up on bug roll and bite cream, and played a lot of gaga-ball to be honest! We should definitely get this game at church, its amazing, kinda like dodgeball, but in an enclosed ring and depends a lot on bounce and how aggressive everyone feels! (which is very, the boys are usually so competitive that they catch themselves out in ninja-like jumps, and us girls get to the final! I’ve even won a few times J) Thursday started and continued with worse rain and camp-flooding, we cleaned the pavilion store rooms, took the boats to the jetty (each boat a 12 person job!) but then had half an hour off so we showed eachother pictures from home which was really nice J Talked shopping with manni at lunch, planned our weekend in Philly with Barri and Nat, then had to change clothes it was simply so wet! In the afternoon about 13 of us were in charge of cleaning Ros’s nature cabin…it was filthy. It had no running water and all of us were caked in animal poo…then the lightning sirens began going off! Being next to the forest, we weren’t able to move from the cabin for an hour!!! We had a VERY EXCITING few games of jamie’s ‘point north’ but then when cleaning again, Ros discovered in one of the big boxes, a bundle of 54 WOOD MICE eating the tents!!! Nat and Emma were freaking, and we were stuck in this room for the foreseeable future! Luckily for them, after 35more minutes we were given the all clear to go back inside; me, Jamie, Sarah, Chloe, Ros and Steve took nets and the box into the middle of the forest and took the lid off…man can they jump! We caught two and released the rest…Jamie made a gym in one of the tanks with dumbbells, wheel and pull up bar for the mice and they’re now happily living in the Nature cabin, albeit next to Fei’s snakes and Lizzie the lizard (who turned out to actually be a salamander). Emma, Jamie and I were in charge of sanitising the canopy of the cabin but found loads of dead mice in the bird boxes up there. Mixed emotions on this whole nature thing, but definitely doing better than I was pre-America. Friday was similar, rainy and a lot of prep for the arrival of the domestic staff today; we were getting very scared about that happening. We’re all now like a little family, ridiculously close, and the thought of more people coming into our space and our relationships was really worrying! We were all meant to go to a drive-in movie theatre in the evening, but AJ’s van had a flat, LeNissa had to stay and couldn’t take the truck AND Barri could only take 3 us her car, so it turned into movie night in the staff lounge J the sight of 40 of us sleeping on tens of sofas must have been pretty hilarious, you REALLY get to know eachother at the sight of eachothers pj bottoms J We started with tangled (I was saved a spot next to the kids Julie and Caitlyn, as far away from the 16 people in couples as possible, which I appreciated, and nearer to those who knew the words to the songs) and then we had Inception (during which everyone was asleep). Beforehand we went to the garage to stock up on food. I got candy corn and Ben&jerrys (one of my 40 flavours I’ve not yet tried) except James had to finish (mostly eat) both, as well as his own full litre of Ben*Jerry’s! That boy can eat. The Domestic staff arrived today, New York Chelsea arrived early and shes SO lovely, love her! We made up a game, ‘groundball’ with kid Caleb, oh and Mia, Shareena’s 3year old, has become attached to me! She is GORGEOUS, and so friendly, so been very broody on her on my hip today! Started a Jigsaw with Jenna and James in the morning, that proved to have pieces of another one in, and not enough pieces of its own, but after that its been a bit stranger than usual. At 2 Nat and I met our first other roomie, Michael (MJ) we loveeee. She’s so cool, from nearby Connecticut and same age as me with a birthday next week!!! That makes me Cabin leader though, as I’m the oldest, which is a bit scary, but also a bit disappointed because shes not Christian, and I’m leading devotions now for not only kids, but these co-leaders! I was under the impression we’d both be Christians like in other cabins :s other roomie Leeandra seems lovely too. We played lots of Getting-to-know-you-games with all 80  or so staff which was fun, but don’t quite remember everything about everyone yet…do know some fun games mind! Our boys are clearly very intimidated, although they’re tall, ours are scrawny as and these guys are HUGE built in basketball kits, Yankees caps, with their swag on! they nearly killed us in Gaga ball! So Orientations getting on its way, the parts together are fun, but there are big divides in the group. Its weird when Nat, Jenna and Mary go off to do lifeguard stuff and the programme staff go to their areas. Its also difficult that we’re not all at camp for the same reason. Leeandra’s been filling us in on a lot of horror stories about the kind of kids we get in the ‘greater Hartford kids’ week; teenagers scare me,  at the best of times and leeandra’s a self-confessed ‘ghetto-kid’ herself and struggled with them so I’m feeling thoroughly out of my depth, hopefully I’ll come around to the idea as the week continues! Now people are here, we had a full group camp fire devotion. It was nice, but definitely got me thinking about what i’d expected and the reality of it. There was a time when our co-leaders could request prayers in front of the group, and listening to what some people had to say was just overwhelming. At just 16 so many of our junior counsellors are struggling with foster families, their own kids, imprisoned siblings etc. Even with a Manchester background, its not quite like anything I’ve ever experienced. God’s clearly doing so much through the salvation army in their lives, feeling pressure, in a positive way i guess, to a be as good a witness as humanly possible! It seems like its gonna be a hard  job constantly now! Off to play gaga and manhunt.

These last two days I’ve physically worked harder than ever before in my life! We’ve had so much manual labour to do around camp. Day 1 me, Jeana, Barri and Katya cleared the staff lounge, then I went to help the boys cut down trees (used a chainsaw, sheers and everything) and drag them to the bonfire (and I mean treeeeees…huge things) area to be made into mulch. Then I joined Emma, Rach and Nat to rake the leaves around the cabins, all of which jobs took 7hours, 3 changes of sweaty dirty clothes, and 2 showers! Today It was the same, as James and I spread the tonnes of mulch around his ropes course and I jostled around with the crazy leafblower, I must have literally shed the pounds! In the evenings we’ve had a lot of fun with team games, manhunt’s been fab on site, as has been playing mafia with 24 of us, its a little mad and we don’t quite know everyonessss guilty faces just yet…just James’! We played 16rounds of made-up Pictionary after dinner on the deck yesterday and, winning 16/16 rounds it was decided me and Nat are no longer allowed to be on the same team; we have some telepathic scary kinda chemistry going on like me, david and Dad with articulate at home! The round after I played with Caleb (Capt David and Capt Stephanie’s son) and managed to mistake his trumpet for an elephant due to Natalie’s mouthing behind him….he was very offended :p Emma gave me driving lessons on the golf buggy this afternoon. Unlike Jenna’s driving I managed not to crash into a tree, but went at a glacial pace! The lake time was hilarious today, went on the Kayaks and peddle-boats for a while but me and emma had more fun synchronised swimming in the water, singing 90’s popsongs. Apparently there was a video taken, and yes, Manni is putting it on youtube soon! Its so fun having the lifejackets, fun and necessary with the filthy water. If your foot ever escapes down too far it is guaranteed to touch something disgusting! Today in my mulch I found a lizard I names Lizzie, a millipede named Millie and Fei found TWO SNAKES by Arts and Crafts called Arty and Crafty J they were so cute and I held all of them! I’m a changed person :p Also found a liking for gardening! Had a lot of fun pulling up weeds in the gardens actually, despite the 4foot long snake that decided to pop out of some plants, and the chipmunk that literally leapt into James’ face as he accidentally hit its burrow :p Honestly if any of my friends and family saw me these last few days…I don’t think you’d believe it was me! Nat, Emma, Jenna, Rach and I are gonna have a girly few hours now, a girl called Chloe arrives this eve so we’re gonna welcome her on our deck with some oreos J tomorrow there’s meant to be a storm to put an end to our work (and kayaking chillout afterwards) so hopefully I’ll be able to wash some clothes and contact some people providing we’ve not got too many indoor jobs or activities! The domestic staff arrive in two days time now which is gonna be weird. We all feel like we’re on a retreat with our friends, and it’ll kinda change when the others arrive. This is what we signed up for after all though, meeting the Americans and doing some work J Staff breaks we can enjoy just being us internationals, and get to spend time with the rest week time as well foods still amazing btw, their breadsticks (small French bread, not our ‘twigs’ are coming home with me!) and pink lemonade…that’s whats kept me alive through this work!!!

Best day ever. Turkey bacon is strange though. Spent pretty much the whole day in the lake! The water is so dirty the dirt clings to all your hair and everyone looks like a man! Capt dave took me, Natalie, steve and Sami for a speedboat tour around the lake to see all the amazing wildlife(and all the other’s jealous faces on their kayaks, muahaha). We saw beaver dams right next to the cabin area, there were bald eagles in the sky, this whole section covered in lilypads, however we didn’t brave stepping foot on snake island yet! There are tiny chipmunks running around all over the place they’re so cute, look exactly like chip’n’ dale! I spent a lot of time in the water after this with those others who braved it, but mainly the leaders kids (I know right, camp hasn’t even started and I can’t help it!) They taught me to play ‘marco polo’, we did some races, and me and Tatyana, LeNissa’s teenage daughter decided to brave the KAYAKS. OH MY. About 10m of the pier we got over-excited and capsized! We found the boat and oars, but getting onto the boat was a nightmare! With the help of Eddie and Manni in canoes we guided the boat back and Jamie and Sarah dragged us up onto the pier! Its been a day of constant laughing! When dry we all ate together. We had (southern a accent) haaaam and peas and potatos. There were these bowls of apple sauce mary took for the ham, smothered it over her meat only to be told that was desert LOL. Hopefully they don’t give us custard to put on our sloppy joes tomorrow :s. In the eve 11 of us took a trip to Walmart. Taty sorted out my American sizes and Hannah montanna sunglasses, even though i thought my shorts were modest length, apparently not, so i stocked up, and also bought COOL AID, LUCKY CHARMS, MILK DUDS, HERSHEYS LIPBALM AND TOY STORY BANDAIDS. Also got the biggest shampoo and conditioners ever, everything is so big there! We had a giddy time, apparently I’m the 3^rd international Laura they’ve had…but I’m gonna be the coolest! In the eve we had a camp fire and devotions which was lovely, everyone shared their stories of how they came to camp and we sang J It was interesting speaking to Nat, whose catholic, and some of the no-christians about it, but they loved it, which is really exciting for my own devotions! Apparently our cabin is for the oldest teenage girls. This scared me. All my experience has been mainly with younger kids, but I’ve been given this role for a reason! Prayers for inspiration and confidence for leading the devotions would be great, and special thoughts for my sets of 16girls and non-christian co-leaders J I think me and nat will probs be a good match for these girls with our screaminess, lets face it, none of us will manage the ropes course! Can’t wait for them to bring their hairdryers as well, washed hair twice yesterday and its getting used to it :s. Apparently I’m just as irresistible to bugs here as Greece L ow! I’ve made a big effort today to spend time talking to everyone, and move around tables at meals! Its going well, and so nice and non-cliquey, FINALLY :) Well feels like home already!

Oh my, So after what, in context, was a short road-trip, mum and dad dropped me at Heathrow!  I met Kelsey, Jasmine and Nadia who I’d spoken to on facebook for some much needed coffee, then Natalie found me in my yellow dress and CA-Tee the hours ‘til boarding flew by then as there was a lot to speculate about camp! On the Plane I was luckily sat next to a lovely girl from Jersey going over to visit her parents so she gave me loads of hints and tips about New England as neither of us can sleep on transport …even on a 7hour overnight flight! She even pointed out the empire state building way in the distance and all the baseball fields lit up when we landed – truly felt like I was in America! It was so weird seeing all the straight regimented roads and SUV’s even from the air! A very different landscape to Europe! We arrived into Newark at 3.30AM British time and then was the nightmare of CUSTOMS. No where nearrr as bad as people scared me about, paperwork was all in order and I was super nice and friendly so the guy was friendly in return. Warned me to ‘watch out for those American boys’ cause ‘all the cowboys are gonna wanna come home with you to England’. So strictly no cowboys. Arriving, me and Natalie found Ros and Steve, also from our camp, and we got on a 1hour bus into New York for the Ramada hotel where we were to stay overnight. Only, when we got there, we were told we had an orientation immediately, where we met lovely Geordie Mary from camp, but then this finished at 6AM British Time! Luckily Nat, Ros, Mary and I were in the same room so had a hilarious time with Nat’s diagonal bed, my half-blown up airbed, and a CRAZY shower. 4hours sleep later we were in ‘Miami Mike’s’ for breakfast, drinking our full fat milk and eating krispy kremes lol! Met Emma yayyyy and James, Sami, Emmanuel and Rachel and got on a bus into NY city centre (1hour) then bought tickets to Hartford. IT WAS FOUR HOURS AND NO FOOD ON THIS NEXT BUS. We were all knackered and stariving – and weren’t gonna be eating ‘til 6PM now-American time, but the over-drive and over-tiredness made for a pretty hilarious journey. We arrived in Hartford and LeNissa and Capt. David collected us. There we met Jamie who was coming with Bunac, Becki and Sarah who possibly also were? lovely Tasmanian Jenna, then Jeana and Eddie. we got into busses on the way to CAMP CONNRI! OH MY GOODNESS it is amazing, massive and so much nicer than the pictures even showed. The lake is HUMONGOUS, we have tens of buildings for evening entertainment, offices, lodges, game zones etc. I cannot imagine any camp having more facilities or space!!! People were lovely and we got our room assignments! Me and Natalie (who is lifeguard while I’m senior Counsellor) are sharing which is great we’re getting on crazy well and apparently we’re also with two Americans, one of whom is Leeandra as my Junior Counsellor, who I’ve spoken to on facebook J We’re in Cabin 10. Log cabin. And as we’ve found, famous for our bugs. Us city girls are struggling, a moth has so far flown into my face as I swatted an oversized (like the bugs they eat in the lion king kinda size!) ant L we’re freaking out a bit, and one of the showers is only cold so we’re realising we have to man-up A LOT, this is no Manchester or London! We had dinner after unpacking, from our amazing Chef’s, they really are amazing, and I’ll love them forever for making PASTA after our day of starvation, of all things! J After dinner we sat out on the deck of the senior lodge in our rocking chairs and watched the sunset turn to stars over the lake. It was one of those moments that was just like wow, this is exactly what I imagined camp would be, and more! The forests are pitchblack on the way to the cabins, but its so safe and all you hear is crickets as you fall asleep! Ros, our nature director, is having the time of her life with all the new wildlife, however, the prospect of normal fish, as well as water snakes, bears and skunks doesn’t half fill me with fear! Apparently there are turtles though, how amazing is that! Oh and its ROASTING HERE. 5showers already and its not even been 48hours! Thankyou for all your prayers for confidence, I’ve not been nervous or scared at any point, even on the way to Heathrow, I can see it working. It’s only fully day 1 at camp and it’s already the time of my life!!! Made great friends with everyone already and have not been shy in the slightest J off to brunch, will update soon

So this is my first blog off the Camp America site, and is going to kick off my Connecticut section of the Summer Flight check in is 17.25 tomorrow! I imagine we’re probably setting off for Heathrow at about 6AM, dad likes to get ahead of the traffic and we must account for the rain (it will make the roads slippy!?) but there’s still chaos here at Casa del Wilkinson! Although I’m pretty much sorted there’s silly stuff to do, like make sure I have a needle and thread…I need to decorate my backpack to make it easily recognisable at the baggage roundabout… these important things! Nah, seriously, there is a lot to do – I’ve realised that I haven’t actually used my ipod in 2years and my music is appalling. Thats taking some time. Well, its taking David some time, exchange is that he downloads it all in exchange that I ressurect the ‘boyband’ haircut I gave him the other day. Shana and Risa have just left, which is sad I’ll miss my loser-chickens a lot!
Got the number of Natalie who is at Camp Connri with me and also on my flight, so meeting her along with the zillion other blue-t-shirted-camp-americans that we are apparently meeting at starbucks! Gonna start thinking of some good starter questions to make sure I’m sat next to the right people on the plane! Slightly worried I’m not more nervous, but after a year of seeing pictures of Camp, I know Saturday’s going to be fab!
We arrive in the States at 3AM our time, 10AM Stateside, when we’re transported to the CA hotel overnight to share rooms with more random people. The next day Camp Connri staff (Wooo!) are put on a bus to be met by LeNissa, our lovely Camp Director, who is going to take us to buy wellies in Walmart, on the way to to our Hartford destination
So, you’ll have to excuse me for not being contactable ’til At least Sunday! Will be on here as soon as possible to update on how it all actually goes Wish me luck with American airport security!!!
OH BY THE WAY…you will all be extremely suprised/impressed/bowled over by the size of my backpack. Family has a sweepstake on the exact amount it will weigh ranging from 14.4kg to my pessimistic 19kg of a 23kg weight limit…further guesses are welcome Results will be collected in the next 24hours!