Whew! What a week! I think that I was home maybe all of 40 hours in the last 6 days, most of which I spent sleeping! The last camp we had was held in a Retirement Home in the West Mountains. We had 35 kids brought from a few neighboring cities, LuQuan and ShiLing area. These kids were “selected” because they all have some type of family “situation”. Most of these kids are missing at least one if not both parents. This week was the most like a “camp” being that the kids were sleeping over at a location and there were chaperons also sleeping there. I commuted in all but one night but my two roommates stayed at the facility the whole week. The kids arrived Sunday evening and returned home on Saturday morning. Commuting made for extra long days for me as it took at least 35 minutes and up to an hour to get from my home to the location, luckily some mornings I’d meet them at the field trip spot. On Monday we went to the park by the lake, Tuesday we went to the movies, Wednesday we went to the zoo, Thursday we went to the doctor/dentist (not a fun field trip but necessary!), and Friday we went hiking in the West Mountains. We would field trip in the morning to early afternoon then have “classes” or activities for them. In the evenings we played movies a few nights and on Friday night we had an encouragement session for the kids. It was a really long week but totally rewarding. Having on 35 kids makes it so much easier to build deep relationships with the kids. By Wednesday I had my own personal following including one girl who wouldn’t let go of my arm!
These kids were really amazing. We heard some great stories from these kids over the course of the week. On Friday one of the leaders recalled how she was telling one of the students that they were really special and a good kid. He said that it wasn’t true because his father always tells him that he’s not. The leader continued to explain to the kid how he was special and all the ways that she thought that he was special. He asked her repeated if she REALLY thought that he was a good kid and special. She continued to affirm him. Finally it sunk in and he just cried saying that he never had anyone say that to him.
There was also the story of the sisters (13, 11) who instead of asking their mom or grandpa for money to buy things, they would after school go around town collecting plastic bottles and other recyclables to earn a few dollars so they can buy ice creams or even shoes if they choose to save their money. The younger one and I went down the street to buy some snacks and she insisted on buying. Everytime I tried to pay she’d just giggle and say that she was treating me and that she wanted to pay!
Overall these kids were really filled with so much joy and love that it’s tough to tell that they come from less than ideal family situations. It was a blessing for me to be involved with this camp. It has been my favorite so far of the 3 we’ve done. It was a bittersweet departure for a lot of them as they were starting to miss home but at the same time they didn’t want the camp to be over. On Friday, we treated them to a slideshow of all the pictures throughout the week. It was really funny… when the slideshow started and they saw themselves all big on the screen they just burst out laughing!
One of the best parts of the whole week for me might have been on Monday afternoon at the park. We had brought some frisbees so I got to throw the frisbee around. One of the kids was a natural! We were playing for a good 30-45 minutes straight. He started to get really good at catching towards the end. But then he started to think it was funny when I would go and chase down his more “errant” throws… so he started to try to throw them afar on purpose! It was great to actually get to throw the disc around, I was definitely missing ultimate frisbee!
Now on to the good part! The pictures!
Here’s the whole group! We had some shirts donated from Singapore and bought the hats for the kids. It sure made it easy finding all of our kids when we were on our field trips!
I wish I could put the whole sequence of pictures up for the hat throwing, it was super fun!
A whole theater to ourselves! Originally we were supposed to get to watch Toy Story 3… but something went wrong and we ended up watching a French movie (dubbed in Chinese) called something like “The Adventures of Adelle”. It was quite entertaining! Kind of like a female Indiana Jones story.
The kids played a fun game that was a spin on Rock, Paper, Scissors. Everyone starts as an “egg” (squatting position) so then you battle a different egg. If you win you mature to a chicken (bent over with the beak) and you have to find another chicken to battle. If you lose you stay an egg finding another egg to battle. The chicken matures to the Cock (standing up straight with the feathers on the head) and then matures to the flying version I guess… couldn’t quite translate that part… but basically you get wings and are a “winner”. The game leaves the 3 “losers” who get stuck with no one to battle in their group and are therefore stuck in their stage… I also suppose you could make these the winners too…
I’m sure you’re wondering who the white kid is. One of the classes was a counciling type class and she’s the daughter of one of the instructors.
Group shot at the zoo! We ended up giving all the kids a copy of this picture. They were pretty stoked to get it.
I’m sure you’re not supposed to have “favorites”, but really it’s not my fault that she’s so cute. This little one was a good head shorter than all of her peers of her age… at first I thought she was 7, 8 max… find out she’s 12. Along with being little she comes with a great smile and giggle. So fun.
Yay the dentist field trip… the little one from the last picture was a good trooper… she had 2 teeth pulled (baby teeth).
And a doctor check up! A lot of ear infections. One kid with an ear infection so gross that Dr. John said it smelled… eww. But all in all very healthy kids!
The one standing next to Ruth on Ruth’s right is the girl who was very attached to me… like actually attached in the sense that I couldn’t use my arm. Haha.
Look a turkey with a hard hat!
No that’s not paint. That’s water from the lake. This lake celebrates St. Patrick’s Day year round… Pretty gross.
Here you can see where “fresh water” is coming in (the brown stuff) and mixing with the current lake water (the green stuff…). Gross. Not sure I want to eat fish from either source.
Hope this makes up for not posting for a really long time. As you can see I’ve been quite busy. Speaking of busy… this coming week we’re jumping right into our next camp. Saturday morning we loaded the kids on the bus and said good bye and then headed straight over to the office to train the volunteers for this coming week’s camp.
I’m really excited for this coming camp. Not only is it the last camp, but it’s at the school where we run the library. So it’ll be good to see some familiar faces. Plus this will be the 3rd year, I think, that they will have had summer camps!
More fun pictures to come!
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