Day 66

Woahhh it's been twelve days. Okay:

Alright so back on the Tuesday before last a load of people came over. Quite a few actually... Aaron, Jacob, Oli, Leanne, Amy, Dana, Fiona... we just ordered pizza and hung out in the basement for a while. Amy did haircuts as well with Oli and Aaron, which they were very nervous about!! Aaron stayed over and cos we both get picked up by Mark in the mornings he just picked up from here. Then on the Wednesday evening I booked my return flight! Flying from Newark (NYC) to Heathrow on Friday 29th August, landing in Heathrow at 8pm!

Last Thursday was the Batman overnight, which was really good. Markus, Darren and Mat dressed up as the Joker and the Kindergarten kids were absoloutley petrified!! I was involved in the overnight activity too - I was Alfred the butler and I had to lead the Arts And Crafts activity where they had to make a superhero mask. The Overnight activities usually follow the same pattern - the kids are introduced to a theme and are grouped off into say five or six groups, then the groups rotate between different themed activities around camp!

On Friday night Aaron and Leanne came round and we ended up sticking The Notebook on. It was really good, but after absoloutley everyone had said how much of a weepy it was, Aaron and I were very proud of ourselves for surviving it tear-free! Still very well done though. They both stayed over and then Leanne got picked up at 10am by her host family to go berry picking. Aaron and me got picked up by Jacob at about lunchtime and went to the mall, via picking up Fiona, where Aaron invested in an iPod. Leanne and Amy met us there an hour or so later, and then in the evening we went across the road (not as simple as it sounds!) to the cinema where we saw Mamma Mia. It's totally ridiculous with its plot points and stuff like that, but if you don't take it seriously it's still a fun movie to see. On Sunday it was my "host mum's" birthday, and I had a bit of a cold but I went with them to dinner at this quite posh restaurant in the evening!

On Monday we had Sam and Amy added to our bus which was so exciting! Now it's me, Max T, Max G, Brandon, Nicole, Sam, Amy and our CA (Counsellors Assistant) Ricki. Two new counsellors on the bus would have been bad-ish news because I quite liked the balance we had, but it was Sam and Amy, of all people, which was like JACKPOT! Immediatley the three of us started working on Green Dot songs - all of the other buses have their own songs but our bus is so quiet in comparison that we never really saw the point. But when you have the hyperness that Sam and I bring out of eachother then, tough luck, they're learning the songs anyway! The three of us came up with one to Baby One More Time, one to Who Let The Dogs Out and one to I Want It That Way!



Monday of course was soccer night as per usual but it was raining so we skipped the "sitting on the grass" portion of the evening and went straight to Champps. Monday is a great night to have a mingle and get round everyone. On Tuesday we mall-d it up, again, because we needed various little things for upcoming birthdays and travels. It was me, Amy, Jenni, Brigitte and Luke, but Jenni went home quite quick to sort some stuff out and then came back to pick us up! Me and Amy met up with Brigitte and Luke at the end of the shopping sesh at California Pizza Kitchen for dinner.

Wednesday was Olympic Day, so the usual timetable was thrown out the window and it was a one-off day of fun and games. The camp was split into four teams - Australia, Isreal, UK and USA. I thought Israel was a bit of a random choice for a team but obviously the area has such a high Jewish population that many people have been to Israel. Our group was put in the UK team, and we won! Woop!

On Wednesday we really got the ball rolling with travel plans. Chicago and NYC are now totally booked, we just now have to book the Miami bit to fill in the middle. It's well exciting - basically next Saturday, the day after camp finishes, me, Amy, Jacob, Brigitte and Luke will get a train to Chicago. It looks close on a map but it's a 6 hour journey. We're staying at a really good hotel (well, a Travelodge, but you know!) until Tuesday. On Tuesday we'll then say goodbye to our US friends Brigitte and Jacob, and then me, Amy and Luke will get a cheap $99 flight down to Miami where we shall meet Leanne and possibly Oli. We'll stay there until the following Monday, when me, Amy and Luke (possibly Leanne also) will travel up to New York to meet Sarah and Fiona. We'll be there until the Friday and then me and Luke will fly home on the Friday morning. Fiona will too, only she'll be going from JFK and not Newark. Maybe we'll bump into her at Baggage Claim in London, who knows!

The Overnight theme this week was Halloween. I was involved in it this week as well - I like being picked for Overnight activities; even though I talk to pretty much everyone at camp apparently I keep quite a low profile, but at least being picked for the activities means I'm not off the radar completely! I was part of the Scavenger Hunt activities - kids were sent to the tents and I had to jump out, scare them, and give them their next clue.

Yesterday was Green Dot Day, a day imposed by me and Sam unto the passengers on Green Dot bus! Sam told them all to come in wearing Green in anticipation of the Friday Show, when we all got up and sang our songs! It was so good because it was so unlike Green Dot to do the Friday Show... our bus is so peaceful in comparison, the other buses are really rowdy! So even though other buses would have made much more of a spectacle we were still very proud of ourselves for even getting Green Dot up there at all! The bus journey home was absoloutley hysterical - the 34 hour work-day had made me and Sam super-hyper as opposed to super-tired, and at one point I was actually crying really hard with laughter. Sue, our driver, shouted something one-syllable and we couldn't make out what it was, we were like "What did she say?" then we went over this huge bump and we were like "Ohhhh!" .......... You had to be there. Once we got off the bus, Amy, Sam and I went to this place called Brody's that prints really good quality custom T-shirts and stuff and made our own T-shirts. On the front will be "Green Dot" then underneath "Check out our rhymes", a quote from our song melody! On the back will be our names and then at the bottom "The Australasians can't hear you!" ... It's an ongoing joke that will take ages to explain but it's hilarious.

Later on last night Amy and Jacob came over for a bit (apparently I have one of the best host houses, so the people tend to come to mine as opposed to me going to other people's!) but I fell asleep at about 10:45 and they woke me up at like 11 to say they were going home! Oops!

Today is Jacob's birthday and Monday is Leanne's so probably a couple of things on the agenda this weekend! Got one more week to go - I'm just about ready for camp itself to be over now but I'm not ready for this whole set-up to be over... like leaving everyone and not seeing friends every day of the week and all that stuff. It will be sad on Friday but I'm really excited about our 2 week travel/holiday, and also excited about seeing everyone in the UK in three weeks' time!