Week 6 - Summer Camp!!!!

Day 34 - Sunday, July 8, 2007, At 6:30am, we took a cab to meet the 8 other staff to go to the camp a day early (before the kids arrived). We traveled in two small car/trucks (called Dacia-- a Romanian car) and traveled for about 2 hours into the mountains. The camp was about 45 minutes West of Sinaia-- the town I visited before. The cars were loaded down with luggage and supplies. When we arrived we unloaded and organized for the next day when the rest of the staff, interns, and team would arrive. The mountains were beautiful!

Day 35 - Monday, July 9, 2007, The rest of the staff arrived 45 minutes before the kids came. We the two bus loads of kids came we ran waving and shouting welcomes after the busses. We got all the kids off and sepereated them into age groups. I was co-leading with Ionuts (Yo-noots) and we had 5 boys in our group 16-18 years old. We decided to name our group "Galatic Football" and made a flag and a cheer to go with the name. The slogan for the week at camp was "Tots pentru unu, si unu pentru tots" (all for one and one for all). We had the kids go on a scavenger hunt around the camp to get familiar with location and recieve some rules about camp.

Day 36 - 40 Tuesday - Saturday, July 10-14, 2007, Each day, I woke up at about 7am, got ready, had some quiet time, and met the team at 8:30 for a staff meeting. Breakfast was at 9am (a variety of interesting Romanian foods) and Chapel was at 10am. I helped Fibia lead worship on guitar with Alina on percussion and Heidi on Violin. Later on we were joined by some guitar students and other team members. All the songs we in Romanian, so I spent most of the time trying to figure out how to read them. By the end of the week, the kids really enjoyed this time and had a lot of fun!

Then after that, we assigned them to there morning workshops. We had a variety of activies like: cooking, soccer, volleyball, American football, archery, guitar class, English class, arts & crafts, digital photography, newspaper, ping-pong, basketball, badmitton, face painting, and beauty salon. Each of the 3 workshops was 50 minutes long. I was helping lead two guitar workshops and the newspaper.

Lunch was at 2:00pm and then free-time until 4:00pm. During freetime, we were able to prepare for whatever activities we had planned for the 2 50-minute periods in the after-noon. The activities could be any of the sports, or swimming, water slide, trampline, hiking, games we learned the week before, or board games.

Dinner was 7pm and Quiet-time was at 8:00-8:30pm. Quiet time was time spent with our age groups (Galatic football) and talk about devotionals or other serious talks. After, that was free time and I usually made it to bed around 11pm.

I'll briefly mention some of the highlights at camp.

We played this really cool game called Gold Rush. Basically, we spray painted about 100 rocks gold, hid them, sent the teams of kids to collect them and bring them in to be counted. However, we had camp staff dressed up as "good guys" and "bad guys" to steal the gold. The kids had a blast!

I was able to share my testimony with Galactic Football and communicated that they are valuable to God and the staff.

Day 41 - Sunday, July 15, 2007, In the morning we had our last chapel, packed our luggage and supplies, and said good-bye to the kids. It was a sad time for a lot of the staff, team, and kids. I got to hug all the kids had in Galactic football and in my workshops. The kids ran after the bus as we left and we waved goodbye. It was a great and tiring week.