some people are relationship-y. others are leadership-y.
everyone is a mix of both; no one is strictly one or the other. like the myers-briggs scale. you need to be both, you just prefer one over the other(though some people really are straight down the middle).
now in some cases, one is better or more important than the other.
but at camp, both are equally important.
unit leaders are the most leadershipy. and either cabin leaders or CITs are the most relationship-y...i guess cits. cabin leader does have LEADER right in the name.
in anything, i'll always pick the relationship-y side. even in little things like working in the caf; i'd way rather work the sub bar, where i can talk to people while i fix their food and watch people when there's no line, than be stuck in the kitchen doing food prep.
at camp, there is no way that i will ever be a unit leader. partly because i'm unorganized, freeze when i spend too much time in air conditioned spaces, and hate answering the phone, but mostly because my favorite thing about camp is being with the girls. talking to them, laughing with them, watching them become friends with each other, loving them, pouring into them, hearing their stories, just living life with them for a week. i'm not saying that unit leaders love the campers less than i do, just that i'm better at getting to know them than i am at leading and organizing things for them.
some people come to camp on one extreme, and as the summer goes on, i love watching them grow in the other side. for instance, i've seen crazy uptight leader types learn to chill out and have fun, and crazy fun ones become stronger leaders.
even though i've come into my own a lot more on the leader side, i'll always be a bigger fan of the relationship-y parts of camp.
that's why adventure rec has always been my track group choice, every year both as a camper and a staffer.
quick side note for those unrelated to la vida: a track group is a set of activities that the girls get to choose from, and they get to do that every day. there are five of them. adventure rec is all about team building, super fun games, and the low ropes course.
it involves everything that i love and everything i'm good at. it's all outside, you're always doing active things, and you make close friends with everyone in your group.
from day one, the biggest rules are 1. always have fun, and 2. always be positive. whether we're playing games, doing trust exercises, or working through one of the elements, everyone is encouraging to everyone else. especially the staffers; we make every girl feel special, even the shyest or least athletic ones. that in itself was half of why i loved it as a camper. and while i've never been much of a debbie downer even as a little kid, i think the ropes course is where i really learned how to encourage people, and determine to make life fun no matter how much it sucks.
day one is all about getting to know each other. we play name games(that involve moving, not just a sit down and say your name and two fun facts about yourself), and then once everyone knows everyone, we go into other ones(mostly different versions of tag. did you know there was more than one? i probably know about twenty).
day two is more games, this time ones that make you work together and learn to trust your group. and we teach them how to spot, so they won't die on the ropes course the next day.(calm down. there's nothing they could actually die on. just moderately injured. and if that's a strong possibility due to the group goofing off too much, we don't let them on it)
day three and four are spent in the woods. every element makes you cooperate with and trust the people around you, and you can learn a lot about someone by watching how they act as you go through each challenge. ps, it's not an obstacle course. it's nine different challenges, five of which don't involve ropes.
adventure rec is what sparked my love of debriefing things. it taught me to see Jesus in everything, to take ordinary things and relate them to life. see, when you finish each element, the staffers have their group talk about what they did. (what was hard about this? what was easy? what did you learn from it? how is this like life? what can you understand about God from this?) different age groups come up with different things. it's amazing what they can think of. every week i have a kid surprise me. i think this is the most important part of what we do. taking every chance we have to squeeze a little more Jesus out of camp. and it's possible with every track group.
as a camper, when it came time to debrief, i was always the one with all the ideas. a lot of times my staffer would have to say "okay, so someone...besides linda...tell me how this is like our walk with God." so coming back as a staffer i hadn't expected to hear much that had never been said before. but i've learned so much from my campers. i get really excited when someone says a totally original idea. that's only happened twice, but both times i was jumping around and laughing.
as the week goes on, i try to learn something about each girl in my group. i love that we have canteen during track group time now, because i never used to have much time to just talk to my kids unless they were in my unit. this way i get to know them even better.
and as i said earlier, i LOVE to help them make friends. here more than any other, they have to get close in order for anything to work. all during the week the girls bond more and more, start working together better, and at the end of the week they've got all these friends that aren't even in their cabin or unit.
not every camper, and definitely not every staffer(we're always the ones begging for help) is into all or any of that, and that's of course okay. but for me it's perfect. and i can get anyone to have fun with it, if for no other reason than the fact that i'm so excited about everything we do. i love everything about it, and when they see that, they want to try everything that much more(you can do that with anything. i'm sure chi chi got the girls in creative arts having twice as much fun).
