Camp Omega

We made it back, safe and sound!  And in time for the buses too... though most of my kids didn't want to drag their luggage aboard.  A lot of parents showed up to give rides home.


Back-up to yesterday... the drive over was extremely foggy.  We made good time and got checked into our cabin about 15 minutes earlier than scheduled.  Our first activity was a Bible Scavenger Hunt... look up Bible passages and figure out which thing in the verse should be on our list to find: stone, grass, weeds, flowers, feathers, flies, worms, seeds, sand, water, clay, etc.  We had the hardest time finding the feather, worm, and fruit.  On our way back to the Beta Center, we looked at the ground and saw a squished berry.  Our fruit!  Then we looked up and saw a tree filled with little berry fruits.  Right under our noses the whole time!  Two minutes before our time was up we found a feather.  We never did end up finding a worm; no one wanted to dig that much... one of the other groups told us they found theirs under a rock.  Why didn't we think of that?


The rest of the day we spent building our pop bottle rockets and doing archery and canoeing.  Half the group could shoot arrows at a time, so the half unoccupied entertained themselves by starting a leaf war.  They gathered as many leaves as they could and then threw them at the nearest person.  It ended up being war on one particular student, so I stepped in and told them not to just gang up on one person.  The ringleader got a wild look in his eye, "Okay!" and then he tossed his pile at me.  Pretty soon everyone was throwing leaves at me (some got me more than others).  Eh, why not?  So I got in on the war too.  A few students joined my side.  We did okay in the war.  But then a Benedict Arnold shoved a whole pile up the back of my sweatshirt and it was game over.


Canoeing was great!  Sunny and warm enough for short sleeves!  We paddled around the horseshoe and even sailed through some weeds.  It felt like we were voyageurs or native Americans on a canoe trip.  A canoe of boys challenged the 5th grade girls and me to a race back to shore... they were sure they were going to win.  And we smoked them.  The boys tried to say we cheated because I was in the canoe, but they had only two people and we had three to paddle around, so I'd say it was pretty much an even race.


The pop bottle rockets were sweet!  My kids didn't listen very much to the instructions on being conservative with the duct tape... After supper, we shot them off across the soccer field.  Two boys' rockets flew so far they went into the woods!  Aaron (the DCE/our leader) said those two were the best rockets he's seen all year.  Woohoo! 


Right as we were getting ready to pray for supper, Bob came in and told us to come outside.  It was time for the partial solar eclipse!  We passed around welding helmets and got to see part of the sun get covered up.  Without the helmets, the sun didn't look much different.  My students wanted me to take a picture of it through the helmet.  Eh, it turned out okay.  It only makes sense if you know what you're looking at.


Behavior was pretty much the same as in school, but a lot more hyper and energetic.  My students discovered the game "Gaga Ball" and played it pretty much whenever we had free time.  I think our next piece of playground equipment should be a Gaga Ball pit.  The objective is to keep the ball from touching you below your knees.  You can hit the ball with any other body part, but you can't scoop it up and throw it at someone (we mostly punched it with our fists).  There was some pretty fancy footwork involved!  The only other rule is that you can't lift yourself onto the walls to escape a ball (and no alliances or ganging up on specific people). 


After shooting the rockets, it was time for another round of Gaga Ball... in the dark.  Everyone lined their flashlights under the edges of the pit and the chaperones and I held a few so we could referee.  Our day ended with a campfire and a few chapters of our read-aloud book. 


Everyone was in bed and "quiet" by about 10:00.  It felt like I had just fallen asleep when there came a tapping sound at our door.  Was it my imagination?  Nope, the tapping continued.  Was it a boy trying to trick us by tapping on the connecting door?  The tapping came again.  Was it one of the girls knocking on her bunk?  Should I get up and find out?  Once more with the tapping.


It was our male chaperone with one of my students who didn't feel well.  He wanted to call his mom to come pick him up... at 11:00pm.  He said his stomach felt fine, he just didn't feel well.  Deep down I figured it was probably just homesickness, but I said he could call his mom.  The student was still here in the morning, so I'm guessing his mom convinced him to tough it out a little longer.


Today was spent building fires and shelters in the woods.  And playing Gaga Ball, of course.  I could barely drag them away from the pit to go to breakfast.  Yes, they were up by 7:00 and wanting to play by the light of the rising sun.  I'd been up to disperse medicine to appropriate students (I felt like a walking pharmacy), so I volunteered to supervise them. 


After shelter building, we ate our last meal, loaded up our vehicles, and played one last round of gaga before we left.  In my car, one of the girls absolutely refused to sit in the middle.  She wanted to sit on the edge.  Of course, she was the smallest one so it would make sense for her to sit in the middle... after about five minutes of stubbornness, she gave in and sat in the middle.  We made it back to school without any catastrophes. (I got mixed up a bit and almost turned the wrong way a few times... good thing the girl sitting in front knew the way and could tell me to go the other way).


Now time for a relaxing weekend without anyone tattling or screaming or yelling or spraying cologne or airing out stinky feet or...