For the second week of camp there’s a 4 day plus a 3 day camp instead of one 6 day camp. And this week I’m a HORSE COUNSELLOR which is mildly scary because I don’t know anything about horses! The program is bits and bridles and is a beginners horse program for 8-10 year olds.
Fir the 4 day camp (Sunday – weds) I had 9 kids. Which is loaaads. I had asha, Makenna, Jordan, Brenna, alessandra, Abigail, Ava, Clara and Lucia. There was a lot of kids so they were quite hard to control but we’re pretty well behaved on the whole.
On Monday and Tuesday I spent just under 6 hours each day down at the barn. On Monday half the girls were riding while half stayed in and did barn science. In the morning I mostly sat and watched because there wasn’t much I could do.. Then in the afternoon the specialists all disappeared and I was left on my own to teach barn science to 40 or so kids. So I had no lesson plan or anything and I had to teach all the parts of the saddle and all about different breeds and colours of horses. All the information I had was what I’d listened to in the morning so it was kind of terrifying but I think I did a pretty good job considering. It’s a good job I have a decent memory.
then on Tuesday half the girls were riding in the arena and then in trail while half were in the barn doing the barn jobs. I thought I’d be put in the barn seeing as I’m not much use helping kids to ride but they put me out in the arena and on trail for both morning and afternoon. I had to help girls saddle up and advise them on posture and how to ride etc all day even though I’ve never been on a horse. It was slightly difficult but I just kind of listened to the other instructors and think it went quite well. I was originally only supposed to do he morning but then after that session they put me on afternoon too so I hope that means I did a good Job. I learned a lot about riding horses and I feel like I can now teach someone to ride a horse even though I’ve never done it myself. Hopefully sometime this summer I’ll get a chance to teach myself to ride!
Overall being a horse counsellor was not as bad as I thought it would be! I have to do the 3 day horse camp too this week but then I’m hoping I can go back to being a regular counsellor because I feel a bit like a fraud when I’m pretending to know all about horses to the kids that are paying hundreds of dollars to be here!
It’s 20:45 on Wednesday night now, the 4 day camp left after lunch today and I’m exhausted. I had to do polar bear as an early morning activity this morning but I accidentally forgot to set my alarm so I woke up at 6:40 and had to rush to get ready. I was there early but I didn’t have time to get the kids ready so only 5 kids turned up..oops!
On Tuesdat night we had a big scare though. We were on our break at about 6.45pm which is when the kids have free time to go either swimming or hiking. The sirens started going off which means there’s an emergency and it turned out there was a missing child. Because the child was supposed to be in the lake it was a waterfront emergency which means most of the staff go straight to the lake and start searching it. Weve practised it and it’s very regimented so you can’t just jump in and start searching, you have to search in an order to ensure that every part of the lake gets searched. It was an emergency so everyone was just right in with the clothes they were wearing at the time. I went with loca to run around the back of camp. We ran for about 20 minutes (on the plus side the run showed how much fitter I’ve got since being at camp because a month ago I never would have been able to run that far, although the adrenaline probably helped). Luckily the missing person was found, it turned out she had just walked off without telling anyone but it shook a lot of people up and her counsellor especially was in tears because she thought it was her fault. It was pretty scary but everyone handled it really well. Frazzle, the director, wasn’t on camp at the time so Lola, the assistant director had to handle it all on her own which was the first time she’d done that. In the night when the kids were asleep she came around with chocolate to make sure everyone was ok.
Also this means that that was out second real alarm in 2 weeks with the last one being a hurricane warning so it’s not a great track record.
Anyway, we have the rest of Wednesday night off because the 3 day campers don’t come until tomorrow 9am so me loca and echo are watching the devil wears Prada in the staff room and I, going to bed soon because I’m tired!
Summer Camp 2016 