All's Well That Ends Well

We sang, we cried and during the scariest electrical storm I've ever seen, we said goodbye to our second session campers and to the end of Appel Farm 2011.

Staff Week seems like an age ago and yet camp has gone by so fast this year. It feels like just yesterday that Molly and I were driving across the country to get here, talking about and anticipating the coming summer. Now it is over. The children have gone home and the only proof I have that this summer ever existed are a collection of ceramic mugs I threw on the wheel and the momentos I've horded from the beginning of the summer, not to mention the beginning of my travels.

But those momentos - poetry I've written, letters given to me, cards and notes passed between friends, costume pieces from camp dances, worthless gifts from my campers that would mean nothing to anybody else, but have become more important than any of the things I've bought for myself in the last year. I have carried a binder full of this - stuff - for 12 months and as I crammed even more into it yesterday, I was reminded of the full length of my travels. I really have been gone for a long time.

Technically, camp is not over yet. The staff remain here for two more days - to clean and inevitably, party - but the 'camp' part that makes it camp has finished. Yesterday, as I hugged my last eight girls goodbye - Candace, Angela, Leah, Sarah, Jen, Ace, and Haley and Katie who have been in my bunk for eight weeks - I could only hope that I had left them with a few nuggets of truth and a sense of self-worth that they will remember about me and this summer for the rest of their lives. It's almost ridiculous how much you fall in love with these kids. It's only after two months of getting frustrated with them not cleaning up after themselves and aggravated that they never listen or angry that they want to be treated like adults but are acting like children, that you realise how much you love them and have come to consider them your own children.

Ciao for now. xo

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

The Second Helping

I have lived in Australia for 23 years and in those 23 years, I have suffered through some pretty horrific hot summers. But I have never been as hot and disgusting as I have in the last few days.

First session ended just in time for eastern America to suffer one of the worst heat waves in the last five years. 24 people in the New York City tri-state area died due to heat-related emergencies. The mercury hit 105 degrees - a very comfortable 40 degrees on the celcius scale. My eyelids were sweating. The air itself was too heavy to breathe. Even the air conditioning struggld to turn what was toxic humidity into bearable indoor spaces.

Thankfully, the worst day we indured was the day the first session campers left so by midday they had all returned to the safety of their air-conditioned realities. So we didn't have to endure the additional blight of the over-heated child.

As much as I loved my first session bunk and the energy and eccentricities they brought to our domestic dynamic, it was a relief when intersession swooped in. I found this session hard-going at times - faced with issues and challenges that luck never brought me as a counselor last year. But the moments when I questioned my abilities to deal with the teenage issues I was faced with daily, where utterly outweighed by the moments my girls made me laugh or needed my advice or just a hug or I realised how much their trust was my ultimate support.. It is so easy as a counselor to think that your campers think of you the way they do their parents - as buzzkillers, the man, their authority - but when their crying in your arms on the last day and revealing how their summer was what it was because you were their counselor, there's no greater assurance that you did your job. And then some.

The 36-hours of intersession were spent re-setting camp for the impending second session campers. We cleaned our bunk from floor to ceiling. We re-designed our bunk decorations and we all took a moment to breathe (or try to in the heat). After a night of celebration our survival, a bunch of us went to Parvin Park - a local lake in a nearby national forrest, where we 'grilled' (aka BBQ'd) and swam with the other 100 locals who fled the heat for the water.

Then we returned to camp to do it all over again.

Second session is an interesting experience. It can feel like a relief to have everything feel comfortable and familiar but the monotony can be a buzz killer. But at the end of the day, you quickly realise - these are a new bunch of kids with a new set of issues.

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

The Kids Are Alright

It's been a week since the kids arrived at camp and this is the first opportunity I've had not only to sit down and blog, but sit down and write my unloved mother an email. I've been a little side-tracked by all things camp.

After spending seven days with the 2011 staff, it can feel like camp is just going to consist of the counselors and no one else. But once the kids arrive, the whole camp suddenly comes alive and it feels like the summer is really in full swing.

The girls in my bunk are an absolute riot and a completely different batch of girls from last year. Most of them are returners and feel more comfortable at camp than they do in their own homes. They like to talk about boys and Justin Bieber and their favourite brands of make-up and they try to unsuccessfully pry details about our personal lives out of us. They've created a completely different bunk vibe from my girls last year, which has helped in distinguishing one summer from another. Sometimes, they're so on the go that just watching them, let alone counseling them, sucks the energy right out of me. But for the most part, I love each of them and  will be very sad when they leave me at the end of the first four-week session.

This week has been all about the bonding. Having campers move into your bunk is like giving birth to a baby. You have to spend as much time as possible with them in those first few days of camp  in order to truly establish a relationship. Because my girls are desperate to know every single thing about me, that hasn't been a problem. We've made music together, talked about boys together, braided each other's hair and talked about the economical benefits of buying cheap nail polish versus the physical benefit of using expensive nail polish when the cheap nail polish cracks your cuticals.

But this first week hasn't just been about the campers. In my downtime, those couple of minutes where I find myself suddenly free, I head straight to the baby-grand and let some of the summer stress loosen on the ivories. I played in the counselor concert and despite having played so many gigs in the last eight months, I felt strangely nervous about being back on the Appel Farm stage, playing my own music. Somehow, that stage represents so much more to me than any other stage I've performed on this year.

After two weeks of being at camp, I finally had the day off today. A few friends (some old, some new) and I went to Philadelphia for the night, a trip which has left me more tired than when I left. But it was nice to be back in the city and feeling like a person with her own life, rather than being immersed in the lives of her campers.

Almost makes me a little homesick for Sydney.

Ciao for now. xo

Return To The Farm

In my wildest dreasms, I never expected to be back at Appel Farm as a member of their staff. I thought I would get tangled in the yards and yards of immigration red tape or I wouldn't have a dollar to my name or someone in Australia would be willing to employ me and I would be on the first flight home. But somehow, the cosmic planets aligned and I find myself right back where I started 12 months ago.

It's strange being back in the place where my elongated journey began. It was the place where I first became a 'traveller', where I remembered what it was like to be a teenager - to be 13 and have Matt Eaton call you 'weird' and know that he was right, where I rediscovered talents I'd left to rust from lack of use. The summer of 2010 set me up for the year that I've had. It prepared me to embrace opportunity and to not cower in the shadows out of fear or the distance from familiarity.

But this is no longer 2010. This is 2011. The staff is not the same staff I shared so many memorable experiences with. The campers will not necessarily be the same campers I taught to write haikus and who told me about their temporary boyfriends. The buildings are the same and the grounds are the same. Everything is exactly the same, but yet completely different.

I knew this feeling would flood me. It was my greatest fear in returning. How could anything possibly trump my 2010 experience? How could anything come close? What if I made the wrong decision? What if the new and returning counselors couldn't meet a middle ground? What if I couldn't find the place where I belonged in this new cohort of counselors? What if everything goes pair-shaped and my perfect 2010 is ruined by a miserable 2011?

As the new counselors clung together and the returners tried to work out where they belonged, I realised we were equally intimidated by each other. We each wanted the same thing - a memorable summer - and it was equally up to us to make that happen.

It doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen. Somehow, during the training and the workshops and the never-ending meetings and the social activities held during Staff Week (okay, and the alcohol-induced karaoke at Steakouts where I unintentionally won myself a position in the Steakouts Karaoke Championship), we came together. We worked out how to free ourselves of our high expectations and we bonded over the most obvious thing - camp.

It's the day before the campers get here and I remember exactly how I felt in 2010 - hungover from the previous nights' staff party, overwhelmed with information, terrified one of the children was going to hot glue their hands to the art table while under my lack of watch and absolutely, positively exploding with excitement. This year, I'm cool, calm and collected. If not still a little hungover.

I guess some things don't change.

Ciao for now. xo

Camp Conclusion

After three years of waiting, two failed applications attempts, one year of employment struggle, a very long plane flight and nine glorious weeks with the most talented American kids and artists I've ever met, my camp experience has officially met its end. And it was all worth it.

On the 20th August, I waved goodbye to my second session campers and began the mass clean up of camp and Bunk 22. It felt like a bitter sweet ending. One half of me was relieved to have my life back and my sense of personal space. The other half ached for the experience that was coming to an end and the fear that I would never see some of my, now closest, friends ever again. But endings are inevitable and I know they will be a huge part of my traveling adventure.

Once we'd cleaned the camp from top to toe, the Appel Farm staff came together for the Staff Banquet on Saturday night to celebrate the nine weeks we'd spent together. We drank, we were merry and we saw the last few hours of each other's company were the best we could make them. My staff superlative (the 'award' you are voted for by the staff) was the person most likely to surprise you with another hidden talent.
I think that summed up my Appel Farm experience. I knew when I started this international adventure that I would be challenged and pushed. I knew camp would change me, but I didn't know that I would come out the other end feeling more like a writer than ever. And not just a writer, but an artist. I have spent nine weeks utterly submersed in the arts - visual, performance and literary. I have rediscovered passions which have long been in hibernation, not to mention igniting new interests. I have dabbled in ceramics and learnt the sheer pleasure of throwing clay on a wheel. I've learnt how to intergrate typography into my creative writing and become addicted to a whole new art form. I was employed by Appel Farm but I got so much more out of camp than just money and the counselling experience.

As the rain poured down on the 22nd August, I could not have dreamed a more dramatic way to say goodbye to my friends and the farm. We stood in the carpack, the rain soaking through out clothes and luggage, tears soaking through our cheeks, utterly unable to say goodbye to each other. It felt like a surgeon was removing something from me I never knew was there until the scalpal was slicing through. As the bus to NYC drove away and I sat cold and wet from the rain and tears, shivering from 'the fear' that I would never see Appel Farm again,  it seemed surreal that this was the end. After everything, after what felt like a lifetime of trying and then nine amazing weeks, a bus driving through the rain was marking the end.

And as I type this from a Starbucks on West End Ave, NYC, my throat closing over at the memories and the friendships which have redefined my sense of self, I can only hope the road that eventually got me to Appel Farm would eventually lead me back.

Ciao for now. xo

Fight Club

It frightens me how quickly time is passing by. We are already at the end of our first week of Session 2!

And I've only written 16 blogs in that time - what have I been doing with my time?

The first week of camp has been great - a little tiring as it's a constant struggle to keep up with the energy of the 2nd session campers. They're like Energizer bunnies that never die! Thankfully, because they are so different from my first group, I haven't been comparing them or struggling to move on from the intersession.

As a way of helping us come together as the new Bunk 22, Thursday night evening activities was Bunk Activities - an opportunity for us to mix and interact with our new roommates. Molly (my co-counselor) and I organised an Appel Farm tradition which was met with both delight and disgust by our group of girls - shaving cream fight.

This involves getting in your 'swim suit' (togs just confuses them) and spraying/flinging/slapping/covering each other in shaving cream until you are coated like an iced cup cake.

And surprisingly, shaving cream is quite a maliable substance. Once it's in your hair, there's no limit to what you can do with it.

80 percent of our girls thought this activity was genius and ran around like crazed snowmen. The other 20 percent, who had already showered and put on a face of makeup in anticipation of seeing the Bunk 26 boys, looked on in fear that at any moment they might be attacked.

It all felt like a throw-back to my old college days (although without the alcohol and probably nudity which would have ensued.)

Ciao for now. xo

I Will Survive...

Well, I survived the first session of camp. Four weeks later, I'm left a little tired, a little humbled and certainly blessed by the experience I've had so far at Appel Farm.

Waving goodbye to my first session bunkers was horrible. These girls I'd lived with and come to consider my camp family were suddenly extricated from my life like an amputated limb. It was sad to see them go and sadder still to think that camp was half way through.

But after surviving four weeks of teenage angst and continual supervision of their teenage ways, it was nice to see the last camper leave the site and feel like we had the place to ourselves again. We had a day and a half of intersession, which involved a staff party on the Friday night and a trip to Philadelphia the next day, amidst the stifling heat of one of the hottest days in New Jersey history.

As days off always are, it was a relief to return to Philadelphia and be apart of the real world. We spent the morning at the Reading Terminal Market - a huge produce market which boasted fresh fruit and vege along with home-made preserves, bakery goods and International cuisines. After four weeks of camp food, we went a little crazy when we finally got our hands on some quality food. We all pitched in to buy different things - bread, hummus, 'gator on a stick' (alligator sausage - yum!) and nectarines - and then had a feast in the middle of the market.

After doing some shopping, returning to camp to take a midnight swim to escape the heat, our brief day of relief was over. The next day we were again inundated with campers.

It was interesting to see the immediate difference between the first and second session campers. My quite, self-contained Bunk 22 was blown apart. Second session-ers are energetic, enthusiastic and, with one month of holiday behind them, are determined to have an unforgettable camp experience. This session we have 14 girls in our bunk. That's a whole lot of pent us 16-year-old angst.

And on top of what felt like the longest weekend of my life, I woke up the next day feeling like I'd been hit by the flu police. There's nothing like having a snotty cold in the middle of summer.

Ciao for now. xo

Camp Quality

Hello from the sticks!

I am quite seriously in the middle of nowhere, writing this blog in the heat of about 30 degrees, and it’s only 8am in the morning. I knew eastern America could get hot in the summer, but I never thought it would be quite this hot. However, the fantastic thing about the New Jersey sun is that while it’s hot and uncomfortable, it doesn’t have the cancerous infused UV sting of the Australia sun. And for albinos like myself, this is great. For the first time, I can stand out in the heat all day and actually TAN, WITHOUT BURNING. (And don’t worry Mum, I’m still putting on sunscreen.)

So I’ve waved goodbye to New York and civilisation and have arrived at Appel Farm Creative Arts Camp – my home for the next 9 weeks. The best part of the 2 hour journey here was being picked up in a big yellow Magic School Bus-looking school bus. My fellow Aussie – Nelly-pops – and I could not have been more pleased.

Appel Farm is quite literally in the middle of nowhere. There is not a Walmart, Denny’s or petrol station in sight, which is quite a change from the hustle and bustle of New York. The camp is quite spread out across the grounds, with each bunk house representing a different age group of campers. Yours truly has landed in Hill – ages 16 – 17.

Now, while this was the age group I originally requested to be with, I’m still trying to decide if I have just dug my own grave. I am reassured by my fellow counselors that they are a great set of girls who will keep me well entertained, but being right next to the boys cabin and with all that pubescent energy pulsing through their little veins, are also advised they can be quite a handful.

Should make for some interesting times.

The following week is Orientation and is pretty much an information dump on how to counsel and plan classes before the campers arrive on Saturday. As the only instructor for Creative Writing and Journalism, I arrived here knowing that I would have my work cut out for me. Now I’ve also been told that the Journalism program in particular is in need of great improvement. While this leaves me with the creative vision of doing whatever I please, I can’t help but feel the weight of expectation that I am meant to be the person to turn it all around.

But even without the kids here, camp is exactly what you would expect. I’m sleeping on a mattress about as thin as a slice of bread, there are bugs everywhere, Americans everywhere and last night we ate Smores around the campfire. But the kicker was when on the walk back to our cabin last night, the trees were full of fireflies, twinkling like a handful of tossed glitter.


You can't buy that in Australia.

Ciao for now. xo