Staff Week!

The international staff arrived on 17^th and the American staff on the 19^th.  I had the privilege of driving down to collect a vanload of internationals from Logan airport in Boston.  I drove down the night before and spent the night at the Marriott in Andover before getting up early to be at the airport by 7am for the first arrival.  After4½ hours collecting 9 people from a variety of flights, gates, and terminals, we were able to hit the road and head up to camp.  A couple of days later, all the US staff arrived and we were able to get Staff week underway.  With this being an ACA year (every three years camps are inspected by the American Camping Association to maintain their accreditation) we needed to make extra sure we covered all our bases in regards to training.  Matt and I took schedules from previous years and added a lot of additional training in as well as making sure we covered all the usual bases.  With a reduced staff, we also had to find a way to make sure no activity training sessions overlapped to ensure as many people as possible were able to be trained in all the activities.  To make this task more difficult, we also still had a lot of work to get done preparing camp for the campers – while this is not unusual, and provides good bonding time for the staff, there was an unprecedented amount of work projects to get through this summer.  The staff did an amazing job getting through everything, and all the training went off without any dramas.  After a week of planning and running training sessions, meetings, and coordinating work projects, Matt and I were exhausted.  No rest though – the campers get here tomorrow and we have to be all go for them as well…

Pre-Camp work…

So now that I am on the island, it is time to get some work done.  Pre-camp means manual labour…  And this is what is needed to get camp ready for the staff and campers.  Our camp is in quite a state this year as we have just finished building our new kitchen.  This is a huge upgrade from the old one, which is probably as old as my parents…  The result though is a messy main area, and work on the rest of camp being behind.  Several trees came down over the course of the winter, either due to natural causes or taken down for safety reasons, as well as a couple of cabins.  This meant there is a lot for us to do.  To make matters worse (or maybe it made life easier… the jury is still out…) Dave, the Camp Director was confined to his cabin after an incident with left him with an injured leg before camp.  This meant he had to leave getting camp ready to us, and we had to step up and make sure we get everything done without him being there to remind us.  Bryce, our friendly Maintenance Manager, was there throughout the process throwing tasks at us as well as everything Matt (Assistant Director) and I could come up with.

It all starts with lists, and more lists…  We worked through a huge amount of work and managed to get camp to look a little more respectable before the rest of the staff arrived for staff week.  Everything from turning the water on to cleaning up cabins, to splitting and chipping wood kept us busy.  The weather was cold for the first few days and then suddenly, we got up one morning and it was summer – the piping hot weather hasn’t left us since!