Round and Round We Go…

Yesterday’s metaphor was the rollercoaster, today’s will be the merry-go-round. Today I hopped onto one of those old beat up horses and rode round and round at breakneck speed! Today followed a similar pattern to yesterday. Things started out with rain, cold and wind, followed by a relatively peaceful morning with the younger kids. Today was our weekly baking session, and the kids did a great job preparing banana muffins. The muffins were actually really good, and I don’t really like banana all that much. There were no major earthshattering moments to report, just a nice calm baking experience.

After the completition of baking we had a quick team meeting to debrief the majority of the week and to figure out what was going to happen in the afternoon. In this meeting, the ‘walking school bus’ idea for the younger kids once again resurfaced, so I’m hoping that we’ll get it underway on Monday. We also made the unfortunate decision to once again postpone our scavenger hunt…We were really kind of disappointed to have to do it, but the weather just wasn’t going to cooperate. Our backup plan was to bake with the older kids too…Well…Let me tell you, we probably won’t do that again. The boys thought the baking was dumb, the girls got bored quickly and well, everyone was just rowdy as anything! The boys in particular were bouncing off the walls, banging on doors and screeching at the top of their lungs! The girls were a bit catty and generally combative. On top of all of that we had our first glimpse of a relatively major dispute between two of our campers. I won’t go into detail about this because it was too sad, and not my story to tell, however I have to say that I was heartbroken for the two girls involved. Consoling two extremely complex pre-teen girls and listening to their life tales of heartbreak and sadness was not how I had anticipated spending my afternoon. It was a sobering moment, and a reminder of how difficult life often is for the kids in Fort Hope. It reminded me that no matter what happens during camp, it is nothing compared to what many of these kids go through each day.

The rest of the afternoon passed somewhat uneventfully…We let the kids go a little bit early because they weren’t really into paying attention after our baking experience. All in all it wasn’t our most successful day at camp, but I don’t think that we killed the vibe or anything, so we’ll just have to be ready to go again on Monday morning.

This evening we headed over to the first night of the traditional Pow Wow. I’m not quite sure what I expected, but overall the event was a little bit underwhelming. People didn’t really seem to be all that interested in it, and it’s unfortunate relocation (due to the weather) to the arena really didn’t help. There is a dance scheduled for later tonight that we are going to drag ourselves out to…We’ll see if I can stay awake…

Anyway, that’s all for me tonight….

–Be kind to each other and don’t fall down…