Camp

Archery practice

Well, I survived camp with the high school students!  I am extremely grateful to be able to get to know the high schoolers a little better and had a blast at camp.  This outdoor education camp had a nice mixture of outdoor activities and devotions led by an amazing missionary couple.  I noticed a few more cultural differences while on camp mainly related to safety.  During camp I went ziplining across a lake with nothing but my upper body strength to keep me from crash landing on the ground or plummeting into the water without a life jacket.  There were no detailed emergency medical forms, no harnesses, just a towel to wipe the sunscreen off my hands and 9 high school students cheering me on.  It was exhilarating and terrifying, I think I did more stepping out of my comfort zone at camp then my students did.  There is so much to write about and I am too exhausted to decompress it all now so I will stick to a lists (my type A personality is sneaking out a little bit) of pros and cons of being a teacher on camp.

Supervising sand volleyball, teaching is a hard life

Pro:

-First in line to eat

-Allowed otherwise forbidden phones/iPods 

-Morning and Afternoon tea

-You get to make up the rules/decide what is and isn't ok

-Ability to force students to climb a three meter wall while you just cheer them on and take pictures

-Students who come up to you and ask you to pray for them (so humbling) 

-A private loo and shower with no queue 

-Senior boys who take your dirty dishes away without your asking 

-Forcing students to clean toilets and take out rubbish while you supervise because they woke you up at 3:45 in the morning with their loud talking

-Students asking you to join them in the talent quest/play a game of pool/never ending friends to play with 

Con:

-Sleeping in a cabin with 40+ teenage girls

Tramping up the mountains...with cows

-Toilet cleaning duty

-Losing your voice 

-Having to wake up before the students do...and then waking them up 

-If I have to hear one more story about your boyfriend or the boy you have a crush on I might start to cry

-Being responsible for the massive number of students that happen to be injured under your supervision 

-Giving the modesty talk to a roomful of teenage girls 

-Students in your group that tell you if you die while zip lining across a lake they will just leave your body in the water

-Students think you know everything (and come to you at night with a wet mattress expecting you to magically make it dry)

-Being woken up at 3:45 by girls talking on the other side of the cabin

All in all, the positives outweigh the negatives. :)