There's No Place Like Home

Where in the world is KH?

KH is at home. In Australia.

SURPRISE!

I know, I know. I apologise for fooling you. There was only a handful of people in on it and had I made it public to... the public... that would have ruined the big heart-palpitating surprise I had organised for my clueless parents. They had no idea, until I was standing at the front door at 9:30pm last night.

I am not sick or ill or unhappy. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It sounds unbelievable, but I actually reached a point where I felt ready to come home. You can't blame a girl. After 15 months of living out of a suitcase (or three) I started to miss certain things - my fancy summer dresses, my high heels, my books. And you know, my friends and family.

The realisation that maybe I didn't want to move to Vancouver came to me about half way through the summer. I came to realise that if I moved to Vancouver, I would have to set up a life for myself all over again. Find a job, make enough money to support my addictions (to clothes), find a house (preferably where I didn't have to share a room, again), find friends, find hobbies, find a local watering hole. I would have to set up my life all over again, put myself out there, be the fearless ball-buster. And I thought, I could be a fearless ball-buster in Vancouver. Or I could move home to Australia, set up my life again and be a fearless ball-buster in Sydney instead.

And for the first time, the idea of going home didn't rise bile in my throat. It actually sounded, kinda nice. Seeing my friends and family, moving back to Sydney, drinking good coffee, going running on my running track - all the things I loved about living there. But also, implementing all the things I want for myself now, like satisfying this parching thirst I have for making art and music.

So I made one of the biggest decisions I've ever made. I rebooked my flight for September. I came up with a detailed plan for arrival, wherein my best friend was going to pick me up on the Sunday I arrived and then her parents would drive me the two hours home to surprise my parents.

The week leading up to my departure was tough enough - all those ghastly goodbyes I had to make - but by the time I got to Vancouver airport, I felt like I was ready. All I had to do was get on the plane.

Then the plane sprouted a fuel leak.

I was stranded at Vancouver airport until 1am (five hours after my flight was scheduled to leave) when they finally decided that despite the plane no longer leaking fuel, it was not safe to fly (yah think?) and the flight was cancelled. They had organised buses to take us to a hotel, but having a plane-full of people all trying to do the same thing is like being stuck in a perpetual line for a Disneyland ride. By 4:30am I finally climbed into my hotel bed only to wake up at 9am the next morning, feeling like I was suffering the world's worst hangover, and be told that the flight was rescheduled for noon on SUNDAY.

So there I was, stuck in a Vancouver hotel, wobbling between insanity and reality as I tried to work out if this was all a cosmic road sign that I was supposed to stay in Vancouver and not return to Sydney.

But my flight eventually took off, with me in it and after another night's stay in Auckland, I touched down in Brisbane on Thursday morning and into the welcome arms of one of my best friends. I hung out with her for the day and then she put me on a train bound for my home town.

Half way there, the train broke down. They put us on a bus.

Half way home on the bus, a rock flys up from the road and smashes the driver's side window.

They put us on another bus.

I finally make it home where my friend's mum picks me up and we make it to my house without anything going wrong. With more excitement in my stomach than I knew what to do with, I knock on the front door. My dad answers, acknowledges me with a bemused face and next thing my mum is coming down the passageway wailing like a banshee. I'm pretty sure they both thought I was a figment of their imaginations. They're still waiting for me to disappear in a puff of smoke.

But it's not a dream. I am home and my journey, this beautiful adventure that has been the last 15 months of my life is over. It doesn't feel like it though. I feel like this is just another port on my travels and tomorrow, I will pack up all my belongings and head off again.

But this is for real and it's for good, for now at least. I thought I would be scared and bitter about coming home, back to a life which I fled from 15 months ago. But what I have come to realise is that my tale might be over, but it's not the end of the book altogether. This journey was just another short story in my life's collection. Tomorrow, a new adventure will begin.

I don't think I'll ever understand how everything came together like it did. How I ended up at Appel Farm; how I started working as a musician in Banff; how I travelled for 15 months without running out of money, losing my posessions or getting bed bugs. The person I was 15 months ago pinned all her hopes and sanity on this trip. She was looking for something she didn't yet understand. And she returned having found it.

Ciao for now. xo

Here's To The Future (um, someone hand me a drink...)

I could count the amount of days I have spent in the USA over the last 15 months or I could just sum them all up and say - a lot. So, after a lot of days spent in the Land of the Free, I have returned to the Home of the Mounties.

Even at the tail end of summer, Canada manages to be chilly. While all my fellow Vancouverians (Vancouverites? Vancouverers?) trot around in cut-offs and tank tops and apply sunscreen (whaa...?), I am in leggings and a cardigan and sleeping beneath the biggest comforter (that's Canadian for doona) imaginable. Seriously, every duck native to the mid-west was primed and plucked for this thing. A human could drown in the down.

By no means was San Diego hot, at least according to this Australian, but returning to the wintery world of Canada only further reminds me that the summer truly is over and my time in America has come to its end. I've said goodbye to Appel Farm, I've said goodbye to my friends and I've said goodbye to WaWa warm cookies. Let's just stick the knife in a bit further and say goodbye to the warm weather, shall we?

My bitterness stems from having an amazing final week in San Diego. I could not think of a better way to spend my final days in America (although lying on a banana lounge at a five-star resort in Mexico does spring to mind...). Mackenzie and her family were the kindest hosts, making room for me in their homes and lives and giving me the locals' guide to San Diego. We went biking around Coronado Island, ate wicked Mexican, visited the Birch Aquarium and each night, returned to the warm comforts of home. No fighting for kitchen space in the local hostel or counting sheep while some nameless backpacker with a sinus problem snores light a freight train in the bed next to you. Just the couch, a blanket and the most adorable Shnauzer-cross-poodle you've ever seen dropping a floppy frizbee in your lap and looking up at you with hopefull eyes.

But that said, on return to Vancouver, I remembered what is was I loved about this city. Sure, my last visit was for all of 32 hours and the visit before that, a tidy 2 days, but I know enough about Vancouver to feel confident that given the opportunity, I could make a happy life for myself here. Last night, my Vancouverian and Appel Farm friend, Zosia took me to an abstract theatre performance in Granville Island called Brief Encounters. It was a mixed-medium performance where 12 artists from different disciplines are paired together and given two-weeks to create a 15 minute live performance. Watching each creation and later discussing them with like-minded artists instilled in me an incredible sense of purpose and belonging. For the first time since leaving Appel Farm, I felt excited to be a creative individual out in the real world and to be finding a new Appel Farm to belong to.

So here's to the future, whatever that might be.

Ciao for now. xo

Stay Classy, San Diego

Other than what I learnt from watching Anchorman, there was only one thing I knew for fact about San Diego. It was close to Mexico. But even with that being the extent of my knowledge, it didn’t take long for me to decide that San Diego was up there with Chicago and New York as my top most liveable cities in America.

It was a long trip from Philadelphia and not since my arrival in Canada last Octover have I been welcomed at the airport with open arms. Granted, the open arms belonged to my friend and host Mackenzie’s brother, Jackson who I had never met but it was nice to feel so warmly received, after so many cold arrivals at unfamiliar train and bus stations around the country. Within seconds of meeting Mackenzie’s siblings and parents, I felt like I had known them my whole life. They were more excited for me to be there than I was myself.

Being within 15 miles of the Mexican border, the influences on San Diego’s architecture, food and culture is obvious. The houses are scaling cement fixtures of terracotta orange, stark white with red tiling and arch windows cut straight out of the walls. Cacti grow in the place of roses and garden beds are a rich palette of yellow grasses and frosty green succulents. The small patio of my San Diego abode (Mackenzie’s mum’s house) is a messy forest of grass and growth which feels like it should be overlooking a turquoise bay somewhere in Cabo.  

When it comes to beaches, San Diego doesn’t disappoint either. A 10 minute drive across the bridge and you’re at Coronado Island, the Newport of San Diego. Anyone familiar with The O.C. would find an instant appreciation of Coronado – a small coastal community where the mothers are as youthful as their daughters and the surf rats play for the water polo team. But the beaches are beautiful and the view back at downtown San Diego is undeniable. Being a community unto itself, ‘The Village’ of Coronado boasts an array of boutique and independent shopping – The Bay Bookstore, The Attic Boutique and Boney’s Market. A purchase from each will give you a new book, a new bag and a sandwich to take with you for a few hours baking on Coronado beach.

The sun-kissed look made famous by Californians is best showed off at night. The night life is found at the Gaslight Quarter, a stretch of clubs in downtown San Diego which oozes everything from bronzed blondes to bikies. The Tipsy Crow, a three-tiered institution has a deceivingly classy cocktail bar and a deliciously debaucherous basement hiding beneath it, where the green laser show and Rhiannon music says it all. Once you’ve had your fill of five dollar shots and cheap G&Ts, it’s on to The Field. The meter-high stage, tucked into the far corner of this Irish pub make the dark wooden booths slightly superfluous. The Irish punk band of a Friday night will have everybody on their feet and if you’re lucky, you’ll stumble across a bachelor party just to seal the dancing deal.

A little too much fun at The Field meant we lost a day of San Diego appreciation to wallowing on the couch but we bounced back today by spending the morning at the Balboa Parklands, San Diego’s version of the Smithsonian Institute. A morning of wandering around the botanical gardens and National Cottages in the sun quickly took its toll, so we went searching for retail therapy in Hillcrest. There’s nothing like successful thrifting in San Diego’s gay suburb to top off another perfect day in the ‘whales vagina’.

Ciao for now. xo

The Goodbye Girl

Last year, my summer at Appel Farm passed by so slowly I could count the hours. This year, it was a zip line I flew down in a delirious rush. Nine weeks may as well have been nine days. It felt as if I arrived at camp one day, pale-skinned and buzzing with anticipation, only to leave the next day with a tan and the weary look of an old woman who has been living in a bunk surrounded by 16-year olds for the last nine weeks.

How another summer has so quickly come and gone is beyond me. As I type this from the seat of a plane soaring over the dirty landscape of New Mexico, I feel slightly bemused by the thought that camp is over. Nine weeks of classes and counselling and telling the campers not to squirt ketchup straight into their mouths is over. It feels like it was just a figment of my imagination which, for one beautiful moment, became something tangible. Then it disappeared like all figments do, back into the abyss.  And I carry on forward.

It would be lovely to fool myself into believing I will be back at the farm next year, but I know it wouldn't be true. I have sucked the place dry of everything it had to offer me and I have offered it two very willing summers of my life in return. I've come to realise that I'm ready for new adventures, which means no more escaping back to the USA each June. As I drove away in the rain on Sunday, I turned around and took one last look at the place where this whole rollercoaster first started in 2010. I remember that day now like a bunch of images flashing from an old film roll– catching the yellow school bus from New York, pulling into the Appel Farm parking lot, the first time I stepped into the bunk, the first time I even spoke to the people whose arms I cried into when I left.

Had anyone told me this is how it would all turn out two years after first deciding to apply for a summer camp, I never would have believed them.  That I would have a great time, yes. But that I would be so in love with Elmer, New Jersey that I would return for another year? That I would find a crazy kind of salvation? That having to say goodbye to those friends is like no heartbreak I’ve ever known? I don’t think that hopeful yet naive version of myself would have believed that.

There was much that happened between leaving Appel Farm on Sunday and boarding my plane to San Diego this morning, but the only part of it that I can remember is crying. And when I wasn’t crying, I was blinking back tears through bloodshot eyes and sniffling like a crack addict. The last 24 hours has just been one big blur of ‘lasts’. I looked into my best friends’ faces for the last time and I cried into their collar bones as we held each other for the last time. And in the glow of the Philadelphia lights, I had to ignore the unspoken fear that maybe these are summer flings, just like any other. Maybe our love will suffer in the lonvegity. Maybe we will become lazy with writing emails or making dates to call each other despite the time difference. Maybe the overwhelming sense of friendship which consumes me now will be reduced just to photos and anecdotes shared at the family dinner table. As untrue as I know that will be, the thought of it makes me want to vomit.

But as my eyes well up all over again, I feel no relief in the unsatisfying consolation that my friendships with these beautiful people are not in fact ending. Being best friends but in different countries is not enough. iPhone apps and email and Skype don’t create the same memoires. Seeing someone’s face on a computer screen is not the same as walking to the coffee shop with them. A letter in the mail is not the same as a conversation in person. The friends I left in Australia would vouch for this, which makes me the constant in this equation. I am the foolish masochist who continues to knowingly put oceans between herself and the people she loves.

And I know that I should be grateful that we found each other at all – kindred spirits are not easily stumbled across. But I can’t be a member of the Pollyanna Club on this one. I am handing back my badge and just being plain old down in the dumps.  

Think I’ll go cry some more now.

Ciao for now. xo

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

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

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