To Making It Count

The first two weeks of Second Session have flown by and I am staring down, quite blankly, at the last two weeks of camp. Ever. I know this will be my last summer at the Farm. Maybe not forever, but for now. It is time for new adventures. So as tired as I may feel after seven weeks of camp, I know I have to make this last fortnight count.

Week Seven at camp is often referred to as ‘The Wall’, something the counsellors hit with full force. We get tired, grumpy, burnt out and we start looking towards the end with growing anticipation. That’s easy enough for the counselors to feel after seven weeks of camp life, but compared to us, the Second Session campers just got here and they want and deserve the same memorable month that First Session had when our energy was at its best. Our lack of energy inevitably ruins the Second Session experience.

I hit ‘the wall’, a little prematurely, about a week ago. One too many difficult camper-related situations which required intense communicative problem solving on behalf of my co-counselor and I, left me ready to bow out gracefully.

In an attempt to return, or at least remember, what life is like outside of camp, Caitlin and I spent out day-off last week, walking around the Grounds for Sculpture park in Pennsylvania. It was nice to feel cultural again and to discuss art in a way which two adults could. Rather than asking leading questions and prying the answers out of the campers like you pry flesh from a stubborn oyster. After that we disappeared into the rainy-labyrinth of Philadelphia. We got, what Caitlin refers to as ‘fancy coffee’, ie. a latte, and read The New York Times in a cafe in Bella Vista. We went real-estate snooping for Caitlin’s new apartment. We went to our favourite Mexican restaurant on Morris St and we saw Crazy, Stupid Love at the cinema. After a day of doing what normal people do with their free time, we returned to camp, where I felt like I had finally scaled ‘The Wall’.

The two-week campers of Second Session left on Sunday, leaving a large six-camper hole in my 14-camper bunk. Saying goodbye to them made me feel like a parent sending her children off to college. I had taught and counselled them as best as I knew how in the two weeks they were mine and now I could only hope that I had somehow brought them up right. The first two weeks had held some special memories – the rainforest-themed camp dance, the scavenger hunt where my bunk dressed up as my co’s hairy, English camp boyfriend and all the random, sometimes serious but most ridiculous conversations we had before going to bed.

 And then there were eight. I can finally count them all on one hand. After feeling like I was living in an episode of Big Brother, it’s now strange having so few campers left in the bunk. But I’m looking forward to the next two weeks with the eight girls I have left.

It’s not about counting the days, but about making them count.

Ciao for now. xo

One Down, One To Go

There is one more sleep until the end of the first session of 2011 and four weeks could not have gone faster. I remember camp dragging by beautifully last year. This year, it has flown by and it's uncomfortable to be staring down at the last four weeks, knowing that I am going to be at the end of them faster than I would like.

Week Four at Appel Farm is kicked off with our Dinner Dance, where the girls primp and preen like its the prom and the boys couldn't care less. For the counselors, it's an opportunity to remember the days where a boy asking you the dance was on par with a marriage proposal and where the response, "I'm going with my friends" meant something else entirely.

While the campers may get dressed up, it's the counselors who truly get 'dressed up'. The theme of First Session Dinner Dance was 'Sock Hop', also known as 50s. Being an arts camp, you can only imagine the amount of times we have all seen Grease, so we knew what we were doing when it came to looking like Sandra D - both before and after. The one thing I learnt at college was how to make a circle-skirt, so I was put in charge of making the poodle-skirts for the Appel Angels - our version of the Pink Ladies.

Needless to say, despite all our attempts to teach the kids to jive to the 50s music, all they really wanted to do was make bump-and-grind lines to Beyonce.

Classes officially ended on Tuesday so the remainder of the week is availabe for performances. This is one of my favourite parts of camp - watching the kids perform and be recognised for the work they've put in over the last three weeks. At the end of the day, it's pretty incredible what the theatre, technical theatre, music, dance, video and visual artists achieve in the time available to them. And don't get me started on the creative writers...

Tonight is the last night of camp which means it will be an emotional one. There is a whole closing ceremony organised for the kids involving candles and singing and a lot of tears. But it gives them a sense of closure to all they've experienced in our Utopia.

Then we wipe away their tears and send them off to the final campfire, where they get high on s'mores and make out with each other.

Ciao for now. xo

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

Off With His Head!

There are a few great things about being a counsellor at a performing arts camp.

1. As an artist, you are continually inspired by the young creative minds around you.

2. As an artist, you are continually terrified that when the young creative minds around you become older, they may kick you out of a job.

3. There is a constant supply of arts and crafts to be consumed (a creative station like none other)

4. There are constant opportunities to wield one’s creative abilities with the arts and crafts supplies

5. Everyone flaunts their eccentricity

6. Nothing is done by halves

And when you add all these things together you get Saturday night’s Dinner Dance, themed ‘Fairy Tales’. Not since college (and even then, this barely compares) have I seen such gusto and detail applied to the costuming and decorations behind a party. But what do you expect when you put 50 of the world’s most hopeful artists in one place and ask them to throw a dinner dance no camper will forget.

We had Little Red Riding Hood and her Grandmother Wolf. We had the Gingerbread Man, Peter Pan, Rapunzel and Belle. We had Sleeping Beauty, the Fairy Godmother and enough dancing princesses to probably make up the 12. And then me – the Queen of Hearts – in a costume made courtesy of Appel Farm’s Art Barn.

I’ve got to admit, playing the role of the Queen of Hearts does come with certain perks. There’s really no other character you can play who gives you the opportunity to run around screaming “OFF WITH HIS HEAD” and just genuinely be a lofty, snooty, ‘heart’less bi-atch.

Saturday night’s Dinner Dance was followed by Sunday and Staff B’s last day off of camp. Feeling a little nostalgic, we decided to return to Philadelphia – the scene of our first time off together – where we once again crammed 12 people into our camp director’s studio apartment. After a very comfortable night’s sleep on the wooden floor directly in front of the toilet (which is a great place to park yourself after 12 people have just drunk a few cartons of beer), we enjoyed our last day in Philly by shopping and eating and later slumming it in the car park of Tokyo Mandarin as we stuffed ourselves with Chinese.

On the trip home, it started to occur to me that this was the end. The five people I was squished into a car with and who I had seen every day for the last 8 weeks would soon be going their separate ways, heading off on their grand adventures. Some of them I would see on my own travels, but others, I may never see again. This world I am a part of, this family I am a member in, only exists over the summer and soon the summer will be gone.

Until 2011 that is.

It’s tempting....very tempting.

Ciao for now. xo

Some Australia flag flying, overnight camping and my stint as a parrot

I’m approaching the end of week seven and with just over one short week left at Appel Farm, the cruel realisation that this experience will soon be coming to an end is starting to really affect me.

It feels like I have been here forever, that I didn’t have a life before coming to camp and with that comes a fear for what waits beyond next Saturday – when I wave goodbye to my Appel Farm family, these people I have learnt to trust with my faith and my fears, these people who I may never see again but have been players in this beautiful memory of mine.

And then I watch some kid super-gluing his fingers to a table in the Art Barn and I know I’ve had just about my fill.

With second session starting to wind down to Performance Week (the week all the kids perform their work from the session) as well as the camp itself closing, Appel Farm seems to have been hit by a contrast of extremities. The campers are wearing out, the counsellors are wearing out and now our sheer fatigue seems to have turned into eccentricity. It seems not even exhaustion can slow my girls down.

As the second session schedule is a repeat of the first session, early last week we held our second International Day. However, this time it was centred on the International vs. America soccer game – the only occasion in the Appel Farm calendar when the counsellors and campers are allowed (or more so, encouraged) to act competitively. This game is a HUGE deal and as you can imagine, a camp for performing arts never does anything by halves, even when it comes to sports. There are strategy meetings, coaching, training, warm-ups, referees, rules, red cards, water coolers, commentators, cheer teams and a whole lot of male ego going wayward. The International team is made up of all the international counsellors (primarily British, who as you can imagine, feel they have a point to prove) and the American team is made up of all the Americans (who being American, also feel they have a point to prove). While the Internationals were victorious in the first session match, we did not fair so lucky in the second session where a sneaky goal in the final minutes of overtime saw us beaten by the red, white and blue – and they haven’t let us forget it. All in all though, a good excuse to dress up in as much Australian paraphernalia as I could bring with me and roll my eyes at the children who asked me what language I speak in Australia.

One activity I missed out on in first session due to my day off but got to experience this week was overnight camping – an Appel Farm tradition where your bunk and another bunk traipse out into the middle of the field across the road and camp for the night. For a 22-year-old who spent much of her childhood sleeping on a blow-up mattress in the middle of nowhere, one evening of overnight camping didn’t phase me much (especially when there were smores involved). For a group of 16-year-olds who couldn’t bear the idea of bugs, flat beds and sleeping bags, overnight camping appeared apocalyptic. But with a few smores in their belly and the only beetles being the Beatles hits we sang around the campfire, I think they survived with most of their sanity in check.

Friday night brought the first dance for the session and the first opportunity for our camper couples to test out how much bumping-and-grinding they could get away with before intervened by the counsellors. The theme for the Friday Night dance was Pirates and Mermaids and not feeling like dancing with a fish tail between my legs, I went, instead, as a pirate’s parrot. Thankfully, the camp costume shop comes in handy for events like this and just so happened to have a meticulously detailed parrot costume waiting for me to use. A beak, a pirate patch and some extensive eye make-up later and I was ready to dance the night away (between the bumps-and-grinds).

Being at a performing arts camp has been a pretty humbling experience. The sheer talent of the campers I am surrounded by and being privy to the unadulterated passion they have for their art form has been inspiring. This being so, I’ve taken a deep breath and returned to the stage. I performed a few times in first session – singing and playing an original piece on the piano and fronting the jazz/funk band’s rendition of Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag. And on Monday night, I took up my guitar and accompanied a friend’s first performance on the piano. Playing on stage again has really stirred something in me and it’s one thing I’ll definitely miss once camp is over. Below is the YouTube video of our performance - Imagine.

The leadership team like to keep us and the campers on our toes, so yesterday they sent the camp schedule into mayhem by hosting Reverse Day. When your day-to-day existence comes to rely on the mechanical comfort of a routine, suddenly flipping it upside down leaves you feeling the strange effects of vertigo. We had dinner for breakfast, evening activities in the morning, majors in the afternoon, breakfast for dinner and early-bird activities in the evening, where we sat around drinking coffee and reading the paper.

Only at camp.

Ciao for now. xo

The Week That Was...

This blog is well overdue and I apologise for letting a whole week go by before getting my blogging butt in gear. It’s been a busy seven days at Appel Farm and while there’s been plenty to write about, I haven’t actually had any time to write it.


And as I’m still pretty pushed for time, I’m going to kill seven-birds with one aim of my slingshot and give a review of the week that was.

TUESDAY 6 JULY marked the hottest summer day ever recorded in New Jersey and for a few hours, I could have sworn I was at home in Australia. While most of the teaching spaces at Appel Farm are air-conditioned, our bunk is not and consequently, turned into a sauna by 9:00am. The air was practically prickling with heat. And if there’s anything worse than being in 105 degree heat, its being in 105 degree heat with 200-odd children between the ages of seven and 17 – talk about a non-stop whinge-fest. But thankfully, Appel Farm was prepared. At 1:00pm, we scooped up all 200 sweaty bodies, stuck ‘em on a bus and drove them to the beach.

Avalon Beach, New Jersey has coined the term ‘cooler by a mile’ as it is one of the most easterly points on the coast by, you guessed it, one mile. And with the wind chill coming off the water, stepping off the bus onto the boardwalk was like walking into natural air-conditioning. It came as no surprise that the campers and the counselors alike made a bee-line for the water.

As we were on the east coast of America, this trip marked my second swimming session in the Atlantic Ocean, which looks more like a wave-less bay full of dirty dishwater. I can see now why foreigners love Australian beaches, as the golden shores and bright blue sea is unlike anything they’ve ever seen. The sand is littered with the type of thick seashells you buy for a 10c at the local junk store and the lifeguards won’t let you go in further than your waist.

But it’s not the water the campers enjoy most about Avalon, it’s the fact that for the first time since having their ‘candy contraband’ taken from them at camp, they can finally get their hands on some sugar. The most popular thing to do as an Appel Farm camper in Avalon is to go to ‘The Buccaneer’, an icecream store in town which serves a disgusting dish called ‘The Shipwreck’ – 12 scoops of icecream complete with every topping available in store. The kids chow this down in about five minutes, followed by as much candy they can purchase before boarding the bus back to camp.

As they aren’t allowed to bring any candy back onto camp grounds, the campers spend the hour and a half trip home eating as much candy as possible. Needless to say, they arrive back at Appel Farm sporting a sugar high that could rival that of hard-core substance abuse. They bounce around the walls for a few hours until the sugar wears off and then crash so suddenly they fail to make it through evening activities.

And our trip to Avalon was no different. With eyes bigger than their stomachs, the campers hit up the candy as quickly as possible. They came home high as kites, plummeted at about 8:00pm and fell asleep beneath the heat of their little sunburnt bodies.

WEDNESDAY 7 JULY was my day off and after having endured Beach Day in the company of 200 sugar-coated children, the opportunity to relax could not have come sooner. Staff B returned to the beach, this time driving to Ocean City, New Jersey where we tried in vain to catch the struggling rays of sunshine from a cloudy sky (love that non-UV infested sunshine). Lunch was spent stuffing our faces with quality food and watching Spain win the semi-final of the World Cup.

THURSDAY 8 JULY, I was treated to my first all-camp ‘Let’s Sit Around The Camp Fire And Sing Camp Fire Songs While Eating Smores’ Experience. I was first introduced to the sugary deliciousness of smores while travelling through California on a media famil last December and I can see myself gaining a few new stomach roles because of them. A ‘Smore’ is a toasted marshmallow and a square of chocolate which are squished between two Graham crackers (pronounced ‘gram’ cracker) to make a gooey delicious sandwich. These are called ‘smores’ because you always want ‘some-more’ and always live to regret eating the second helping.

On FRIDAY 9 JULY we were introduced to the stylish moves of our campers at the camp’s dance. I was in heaven, not only because I got to dance but because the theme selected for this occasion was the 80s – my favourite era. Donning a very fashionable prom dress, complete with a gigantic white bow and plenty of turquoise eye shadow, I had a fantastic night pulling out my most atrocious moves on the D-Floor. This was almost as fun as ‘bump-and-grind’ watch, wherein we kept a beady eye on dancing couples and intervened with some skankin’ dance moves when we feared they were getting a little too close.

The weekend marked the end of the first 2 week session - Saturday evening was spent watching the ‘Tweekers’ (campers who are here for only two weeks) performances in music, dance and drama before leaving camp the following Sunday. ‘Visiting Day’ was also on Sunday where parents of the four week campers come to visit their children and make them homesick or even more homesick than they were before. In order to counteract this, evening activity on Sunday night was a carnival where the kids can have their face painted or their fortune told, amongst other things. I landed myself a job on the balloon-tying table and learnt how to make blow-up balloon swords.

I think I might have found myself a new trade.

Ciao for now. xo