making the move. come with me!

i'm ditching blogger. you can now find all of my past and future posts at thoughtfulcampcounselor.wordpress.com!

the glory days.

i remember a beautiful time when every table in the dining hall, every chair in the multipurpose building, was full every week.
when there were four full units and four real cabin capers flags, and the colors were the same from year to year: purple for unit 1, gold for unit 2, green for unit 3, and blue for unit 4.
when every position on staff was filled, and(by what i could tell from my camper perspective), they loved each other. they were even allowed to visit the acteen cabins at night after they got their GAs in bed. we were always having fun night visitors.
if a cabin raised a hundred dollars for offering, the cabin leader wouldn't get a talking to about forcing her girls to give.
we didn't sing the same three songs over and over. we had so many that we actually looked forward to having time to sing them. and most of them had Jesus in them.
--Jesus is a rock
--bubblin' over(a different version than the one we sing at campfire now)
--i am a C
--oh you can't get to heaven
--walking in the light of God
and then there are non-Jesus-related ones that are dead too.
--waddley-atcha
--the apple verse from the banana song
--eight or nine verses of boom chicka boom
--the cit verse from i'm a long john
--annie mae

i still love the camp la vida i work at. but for the sake of this new generation of kids, i hope the camp la vida i went to as a camper comes back someday.

monday memories: the funniest fridays.

during one of my best weeks in history(it now sit at number 3 i think), i had four girls who came together. usually that spells out cliques and drama, but they were great. they loved camp and they loved making friends, and they were a huge part of how our whole cabin got so close that week.
on friday, when these four girls left, it was so funny to see how different each of them was. they all felt the same about leaving but showed it different ways.
the first was getting picked up separately. she was the "i loved camp, and i love you, but i love my mom and now i want to see her" type. but she did cry a little when she came to hug me goodbye.
and the other three were the worst. all three were crying their eyes out and all three were doing something different about it.
A was trying not to show it. she was one of the shyer ones that week, so i hadn't expected her to be super vocal about it. all she needed to do was look at me and i knew everything she wanted to say.
B just grabbed onto me and wouldn't let go. she came back so many times for one more hug, i thought all the staff would have been cleared to go home before she'd finally leave for good.
but C...i'll never forget her. i'd never before, and haven't ever since, seen someone go this crazy.
first she hugged me and sobbed until her mom came up. i tried to point this out to her, but she just shook her head and wouldn't look up. well as soon as her mom starts talking, it's like a switch flipped. C gets all animated and starts talking a mile a minute about how great her week was and how much she didn't want to leave. we all told her mom stories for a while, and then as soon as she says it's time to actually go, C goes nuts crying again. i asked her to tell her mom about such and such that happened, and the water works cut off again. her mom reminds her that they need to get going, tears come back.
finally, she hugs me and says, still through her sobs, "i really really love camp and i don't wanna leave you...but is it okay that i love my mom more?"
bless her heart. i loved that child.

all the possible goodbye scenarios with any camper fall into types and subtypes so that they're all basically the same...but there will always be some that i remember more than others. out of all of them, that one's my favorite. =]