Campers Arrived

I'm going to try something new – I'm writing this blog post at night while policing my hall. The kids are, for the most part, quite and there's only a few kids that I'll have to move down the hall and bust. Unfortunately I don't have internet access in my room and have to go downstairs to get any. So by the time this is posted it will most likely be “the next morning” over here, and sometime in the middle of the night in The States.

The campers came today. It was a trickle, almost the whole day, rather than a rush all at once. The first group showed up around 2:00, and a small group would make it to the campsite every hour and a half or so, until the last group of five, which didn't arrive until 11:30 at night.

Its great to have them here, and its even better to have so many familiar faces around. I know probably about half of the campers from previous camps personally, and there are others that I know through reputation. I realize that I'm a staff member and they're campers, but for some of them I can't escape the feeling that I'm catching up with old friends, rather than policing a force of unruly teenagers. And the truth is that I think this is the most comfortable I've felt at the start of a camp yet – we'll see how long that lasts (even the best of kids can do some pretty crazy things at times).

I have a good feeling about this camp. The group of kids is great, I'm actually already sad that they'll be leaving next weekend – I wish we just had more time with them. Some of these kids, it'll probably be the last chance I get to see. They'll be too old to come to camp next year, and who knows what I'll be doing a summer from now. Some of them have kind of grown up through the camps with me. A couple of them I met at my very first camp, and I couldn't be happier that I get a chance to be with them again.