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P.S. You may notice the splendid new blog banner atop this post. Many thanks to my lovely boyfriend, the wonderful @SnafuAl, for making it for me :).  I feel all proper blogger now!

1 month in...

So, dear followers, I do appreciate you bearing with my sporadic updates.  As of tomorrow, I will have been here a full four weeks. It simultaneously feels like no time at all and forever.  I have photos of my house and town up in my cabin and they seem like an old dream that never really happened.  As for camp, we're now into session 2, with a new cabin and new kids for yours truly.  Here are some recent happenings.
Wednesday was our worst case scenario theme day. At breakfast, milling around, we had aliens, mutants, zombies, a robot uprising,conspiracy theorists and many more.  I was a zombie and there were a lot of pictures taken so I hope you'll get to see some. I actually wanted to be a conspiracy theorist but was demanded as a zombie as apparently I'm very good at it.  Didn't help my sore throat doing the grunting and groaning (the dreaded lurgy is making the rounds with a vengeance).  I sat at a table of five wee boys and in under a minute was sitting on my own because they all ran off. Scaring small children is a marvellous way to start one's day!  

 Then in the evening, we did an alien invasion thing - the younger kids were split into three army groups (older campers had an outing) with appropriate warpaint and the purple army caught the yellow ones and took them to their jail, yellow caught orange, orange caught purple, etc.  But 2 counsellors from each army were aliens in human disguises and could tag anyone and take them to a fourth secret jail.  Needless to say, I volunteered for alien duty!  It was hilarious fun, doublecrossing little children who thought they could trust me and dragging them off to the other side of camp. A couple of wee boys were still loudly telling people not to trust me at dinner today! Success!

Thursday's evening activity was cabin night, and we chose "Secret Mission". Our secret mission was revealed when the deputy programming director slipped one of us a note saying that his boss had been winding him up so he wanted us to steal Buttermilk, her rubber chicken, plant a ransom note pinning it on the boys and make sure we had a good alibi. So we actually spent our whole cabin night inside making a ransom note from magazines, while the rest of camp were outside causing chaos and it was a really good night! For our alibi and for covering for being indoors, we and the girls spread that they'd got a hideously bad score on cabin cleanup and we forced them to miss evening program to clean it top to bottom.  Apparently heaps of people were falling for it!  

Other things happening at camp this session include the Rock Paper Scissors world championship - every day at lunch there is a cabin vs cabin world championship, with brackets posted on the bulletin board.  There is also a cabin Pay it Forward scheme going on, so cabins are doing nice things for each other, like turning dinner into a five star experience, or taking a cabin on a sunset boat cruise. I got asked to help with one of these for a cabin whose counselors were mostly off last night.  They dressed in black with hoods, delivered a clue to the cabin of 9 year old boys after lights out.  The clue led them to a landmark around camp, where they received another clue, and so on, until they finally arrived at the soccer field for a massive moonlit waterfight.  Would greatly appreciate any suggestions as to what my girls could do to live up to that sort of thing!!!

Today I went to lovely Freeport, home of many outlet shops.  Got Nike Airs for a price so ridiculous the town should be renamed UberCheapPort then ate in the poshest McDonalds I've ever seen in my life!  Back at camp chilling now - it's another special day here.  The theme was Wicked Vacation, and involved a tour of the US, so there were lots of tourist attractions set up around breakfast, including a civil war reenactment ( two counselors in costume with US and Confederate flags having a fistfight), an Amish knitting demonstration, a corn maze and a chance to see Justin Bieber.  I particularly loved that the swimming dock - set out a little bit into the lake, was designated Britain, and the British counselors were out on it with a flag and loud posh accents (one was channeling Prince Philip I swear). They eventually paddled over in a canoe for their American vacation and were welcomed by the staff singing Party in the USA. I got back to camp in time for dinner where there was a flashmob dance before our popsicles for pudding. Now they're about to start KP in the Park (spot the suggestion of another Scottish counselor) - a music festival to end the day.

So that's the sort of craziness one can expect here in the land of summer camps!  I've also spent a lot of time in Walmart and at local ice cream parlours which are particular favourites of we camp types. My new girls are a very nice bunch and things are very positive right now.

Hopefully speak to you all soon my dears!

Ok, I'm trying!

Gosh, it is impossible to find any time whatsoever at summer camp.  And even during my time off I'm out being sociable so can only catch the odd half hour at the computer to quickly tweet that I'm still alive and email mum and boyfriend.  All is going fine and I'm settling in nicely.  Crazy busy but I'm coping.  Anyway, here's how I spent my first day off.

It was kinda needed after last night.  I had one kid up 8 times during the night with homesickness. Joyous 2 hours of sleep lost.  Was actually the last one in my cabin awake this morning.  Wandered down and people were planning to head to a place called Step Falls in New Hampshire.  This is it here and I'm sure you can google some more pics:  http://www.newenglandwaterfalls.com/waterfall.php?name=Step%20Falls  I was quite disturbed by the first mention of "natural water slides" that had been made by water erosion on the rocks.  As it turned out I didn't try those (one guy hit his head and another has a chunk out of his elbow) but I did a lot of basking in the sun and lying half in one of the pools.  A lot of alcohol was consumed (by others!).  I actually skipped breakfast and lunch, bad girl! It was really nice and relaxing and I feel like I got out there and did things but am really chilled and recharged after my day off.  Headed back to camp to get the wounded seen to and grabbed some food.  I can barely remember what the actual meal was meant to be but there were two pieces of corn bread with my name all over them woohoo!  The food is generally excellent here but I was really rushing it tonight and trying to chat at the same time.  I totally love the tacos and I've been eating salad or fruit with every meal in an attempt to be healthy.  After dinner, we headed to a spot one guy recommended to watch the sunset and the views were GORGEOUS!  Got some nice pics there - hopefully I will get a chance to upload some pictures soon. After that, we headed to the camp's favourite ice cream place, called the Mosquito.  That was my second time, the first being the scavenger hunt day last week that involved us getting very lost in Portland.  I had an ice cream sandwich with milky way ice cream in the middle, nom!  Then a few of us headed to a pool hall, where I got chatting to people cos of the accent - manager is an English guy and the barman thought I was northern Irish, despite him having served in Afghanisation with norn iron folk!  Got some free goes on the jukebox - Talk Dirty To Me, Final Countdown and Bohemian Rhapsody, oh hells yeah!  Then we had two knockout pool tournaments, the first of which I managed to beat all of the guys playing! Oh I am so flukey sometimes!

Chilling out for a while now and catching up with people, still have no idea what is happening in the world.  Seriously, there could have been a revolution in the UK and I wouldn't know about it!  Anyway, I'll do my best to do more updating, and I have lots to say about the last 10 days or so that I haven't got round to!  Chat soon dear readers!