You-Make-Me Feel Like I'm Living a Teen-age-Dream

Firstly, welcome to those of you joining us from the IEP Summer Camp website. My contact at IEP (my sponsor organisation in Australia) emailed me last week and asked if I would be comfortable with IEP posting a link to my blog on their official website. Um, a chance for more online traffic? Need I respond to that at all?

So welcome all ye new readers. I hope this blog gives you the insight into camp life that I eagerly sort after and failed to find when I was in your position 12 months ago.

Once again, the busy camp schedule has gotten the better of me and my blogging has suffered. Between the 4th of July celebrations, Beach Day, International Day, the Camp Dance and all the 16-year-old angst-enriched drama that happens in between all that, I haven't had the time to do anything but drink A LOT of bad cafeteria-style joe (that's American-drawl for coffee.)

And believe me, the drama is as thick and volumous as Fabio's chest hair. I swear, put a video camera in front of these teenagers and you've got yourselves an MTV reality show to be reckoned with. I don't remember it all being so hard when I was a teenager, but apparently, solving the issues between teenagers is like trying to declare world peace.

When I'm not stopping nuclear warheads from exploding and leaving only the cockroaches behind to rebuild the world, I'm teaching my brilliant creative writing minds and becoming continually more jealous of their abilities. My break-through this week, which put all other teenage dramas on the back burner, was when one of my younger writers who I often have to battle with to be a part of the class, wrote a poem that he wants to read on-stage at the upcoming Friday Nigh Concert. I had to physically stop myself from hugging him and making the kid feel completely uncomfortable.

When I'm not finding refuge in those small achievements teaching brings, I'm continuing to establish myself as the counselor with no shame when it comes to being utterly ridiculous. We all know KH does not do things by halves and camp aggravates that tendency in me. At International Day, I brainwashed poor American children into eating Vegemite, at the Outer Space-inspired Camp Dance I turned myself into a hunk of space junk and screamed and squealed my way through every rollercoaster at Six Flags during Trip Day. Just in case the campers doubted my dedication to shame, I dressed up as a grandma for Reverse Day and coughed and spluttered over every child who would get close enough to me.

You know... sacrificing my squeaky clean reputation all in the aid of making children laugh.

Ciao for now. xo