What is Camp America?
Camp is a 9-week adventure – it’s fun, it’s exciting and it’s the best trip you’ll ever take. It’s your chance to get out and experience something different by living and working at a summer camp in the USA with thousands of others from all over the world.
Since 1972 thousands of Aussies have included Camp America as part of their ‘working the world’.
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Blog 1.
Even right now, as I am writing this, it still doesn’t even seem like a reality that in a couple of weeks I will be in America. Travelling is something that I have always wanted to do and I was always completely jealous whenever I heard of someone else going overseas but now that it’s actually happening to me, I can’t believe it!!
When I first heard about the opportunity to go to Camp America, I applied, without really thinking of the consequences – just a far off, distant opportunity that might happen. But after the interview process, and learning about what going really meant, it was something I really started to want. When I found out I was going after waiting for a placement that seemed to drag on forever, and the frantic checking of my email every hour, I can honestly tell you that it was one of the most amazing moments of my entire life – I spent the next half an hour calling basically every single person I knew to tell them the news!
The months that have followed have flown by, drowned in a sea of paperwork, appointments, and constant emails begging for answers from people in the know to reassure myself. I went from telling people “I’m going to America in 6 months” to “I’m going to America in 6 weeks” so fast that it didn’t allow me enough time for my mind to catch up. And all this work was done even when I had no idea where I was going or when I was leaving!!
When I finally found out I was placed at a camp, it was a surreal moment – making everything I was working towards seem real and worth it. I will be working for a total of 11 weeks at 2 different Girl Scout camps in Pennsylvania. I can see myself now, sitting around a fire, chatting with girls and devouring smores, although I’m not completely sure exactly what smores are.
The idea of me going away is simultaneously the scariest and the most exciting thing I have ever done in my life. It will be the first time I have travelled by myself, the first time I’ve left the country and the longest time I have ever been away from my family. I’m throwing myself in the deep end of this experience and I guess I’ll have to wait to see what happens. But even at the scariest and most nerve-racking moments, or the moments when I get a small taste of how much I’m going to miss my family when I’m gone – an image of the bright lights of New York, or myself exploring Philadelphia flashes across my mind and I know it will all be worth it in the end.
Now all I’ve got to do is to prepare myself for my final leave date – shop for my clothes and then figure out how to get all the clothes I want to take into only 2 suitcases; buying Australian stuff to show to the kids when I’m over there; figuring out how to get to Manhattan from my hotel, so I can catch my bus that will take to Pennsylvania – but to perfectly honest out of all the problems I could be dealing with right now, this isn’t a terrible one to have. J
Cheers,
Bethany,
P.S – I googled smores – or should I say s’mores – and they are “a traditional nighttime campfire treat popular in the United States and Canada,[1] consisting of a roasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker.” Thank you Wikipedia!!
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Blog 2.
With only a few days left before I leave, my remaining time is filled with saying goodbye to friends, getting all of my flight details organised and finalised, getting bombarded with Australian souvenirs to take over to the kids and a nervous energy that fills me up when I realise that I’m actually leaving.
Although I am fully aware that all of this is really happening, I don’t think it will really hit until I’m in the airport, walking away from my family and at the point of no return, where the feeling of being alone and anxious will consume me!!
I’m nervous about all the travelling I have to do – plane to plane, bus to bus, bus to hotel, hotel back to bus; and as this is my first real experience with international airports, the whole collecting baggage/going through customs idea is also foreign to me, but hopefully a kind American will hear I am Australian, love my accent and will be willing to help me out!!
I can’t wait to start that camp though; I’ve been looking at all the activities that these girl scouts get to do and they are amazing! Everything is included, from horse riding and water activities, to dancing and singing. Hopefully no-one will notice if I join in and do all the activities as well. Although the nerves and worrying can be very powerful, this epic adventure that I am going on is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I know that I am so lucky to be doing it – that thought never escapes me.
And as my last blog from Australia ends, I have to say that I am probably nowhere near as prepared as I would like to be; my clothes are still piled in a corner of my room, my camera has no batteries in it, I need to transfer my money over into American money (which is bizarre compared to ours, it’s like play money, and all looks the same), and get a really good birthday present for my sister, because I’m actually leaving on her birthday.
All I can say to the people who I love and who love me is that I will miss you so much, probably more then I can fully understand right now, but all of this is for the call of adventure, and I will come back with a new life experience and hundreds of photos that I will make you look at again and again and again.
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Blog 3.
I am finally here – after almost 6 months of waiting I am finally at my camp in Pennsylvania!
The incredibly long plane trip here was almost unbearable – Melbourne, Australia, to Auckland, New Zealand, then on to Los Angeles, had an 11 hour layover, and then onto New York. The plane travel, plus the two buses I had to catch to my hotel clocked up to almost 25 hours travelling. When I got to my hotel, I didn’t care about anything but my bed and a shower!!
I didn’t have much time to explore this new crazy country I was in before myself and a bunch of other girls who were going to the same camp as me, piled onto a bus and headed to Port Authority in New York City – a busy, exciting, intimidating, overwhelming place to be. Then we, and all of our massive bags of lugagge, boarded another bus that took us to Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, where the camp picked us up and took us on our first very American road trip to Walmart.
After arriving at the camp and taking in the beautiful surroundings, we were shown our tents – yep, big canvas tents that were on top of a raised wooden platforms, containing nothing but 4 squeaky beds. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I’m only at this camp for my two weeks of orientation, and then I’m moving onto my next camp. Hopefully that one is a bit more luxurious, but I’m getting the feeling that I might have to get used to not having much!!
The days pass in a haze of being jetlagged and getting used to this new environment – the accents and the people and the customs and the food and the time difference (I am 14 hours behind Australian time). It’s a whole lot of stuff to take in at one time and can be very overwhelming – I find that with nothing to do my mind travels back home and I miss it a lot. However I am trying to soak up all I can and fully experience this amazing place I am in and the opportunity I have been given.
I will let you all know how I am going soon, and by that time I will be right in the middle of pretty intensive training, so hopefully I will be in a good mood!! Sending love to my family and friends at home
Bethany
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Blog 4
So because the internet here is very, VERY slow and so many people want to use it, my blogs have been really late – I apologise to the people reading them!! And now to the overview of my first two weeks at camp.
After 2 weeks on intense staff training, covering everything from first aid to diversity training, I move to my first camp, Furnace Hills, and I get assigned my first group of campers – 20 girls, aged between 8-11, the biggest group anyone has. Me and the other 2 counsellors start to plan the week, and on the day they arrive, we are all freaking out – the reason we came here and all the training is about to start.
Without a doubt that week was the craziest, most frustrating, emotional and hard weeks I have ever had -the kids cried, whined, complained, were homesick, woke us up in the middle of the night because of bugs in their tent and just about everything else in between. I couldn’t believe that these girls where my first group and introduction to camp – I felt like giving up and leaving right then, but I made it through the week and I have no doubt it has prepared me like nothing else for the weeks to come.
My second week I was given a group to run by myself – slightly older girls, 10-13 years old, and only 9 of them, which was a welcome change from the week before. I couldn’t believe the difference from the first week – these girls were sweet and actually did what you asked them to. And that week ended with a great reward – 4th of July weekend!! I feel fully initiated into camp life – it’s funny how quickly you adapt to the changes, like sleeping in tents and having dinner at 5 and singing ALL the time
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Blog 5
Here is a quick rundown of how camp works, both week wise and day wise, just so you all can have a general idea!
WEEKWISE
Sunday – kids check in, get taken to their units, dinner, opening campfire
Monday – activities all day long
Tuesday – activities, with special all camp activities at night, where all the campers join in together for games
Wednesday – activities and cook out night, where the campers choose their own dinner and cook it over a camp fire
Thursday – activities and closing campfire, complete with a massive ice cream social party
Friday – cleaning, packing luggage and the kids go home again
Friday night and all of Saturday – time off!!!!!!
DAYWISE
7.20 – wake up kids
7.45 – go to dining hall, sing songs
8-9 – breakfast and flag ceremony
9-12 – morning activities, including swimming, hikes, arts and crafts, archery, nature programs, cooking programs and program specific activities such as horse riding or bike riding
12.15 – more songs
12.30-1.30 – lunch
1.30-4.30 – afternoon activities
4.45 – a whole lot more singing
5-6 – dinner and another flag ceremony
6-9ish – night activities – cookout, all camp activities, campfires, ect.
9-onwards – bed time
And that’s a quick rundown of what I do all day!!
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Blog 6
The following is a list I have compiled of places and things I have discovered and love about America:
1. Walmart – this ridiculously large shop that has everything from groceries to clothes, electronics to toys and is crazy cheap has been an automatic pit stop whenever we have our nights/weekends off
2. Amish Country – this particular camp is smack bang in the middle of one of the most densely populated Amish areas in America. It is still a joy to be driving down a road and see a horse and buggy going down the road, with women in their long dresses and hair nets, and men in their straw hats and suspenders. FACT – so many Amish people in fact that the local Walmart has a huge area with stables and poles to tie their horse and buggies to.
3. Red Robin – a restaurant that serves amazing burgers and fries in baskets (just like in the movies!!) where the fries are endless and free refills of drinks – so as many pepsis and fries as you like! FACT – every place I have been to so far has had free refills – $2.50 AUS for a never-ending amount of soda (yes, I now call it soda!)
4. 5 Below – an amazing store where everything in it is $5 or below (duh!) Definitely a place to stop for cheap candy, sunglasses and flip flops (look how American I am already!)
5. Gabriel Brothers – a clothing store that seems a bit dodgy on the outside but just has really good clothes at ridiculously cheap prices – got 2 pairs on sunglasses and a pair of shorts for $11 USA.
6. Ephrata – a sweet little town right near camp that has the most amazing theatre in the whole world – an old style ticket box, only 2 cinemas, old men in suspenders serving food and drinks from the concession stand and old movie posters on the wall. Sit back and enjoy the movie as the red velvet curtain goes up.
7. Fireflies – these pretty little creatures fly around at dusk and night illuminating the sky and fields and making me smile
8. American’s lack of knowledge of other countries – while I have been here I have so far been mistaken for Welsh and German, had people ask if I speak English, when I told someone that I was an Australian got asked ‘What is an Australian?’ and had children ask me everything under the sun, from whether we get TV and movies, to whether we have chocolate, to whether we get any American music, to whether I have a pet kangaroo. It absolutely staggers me.
9. Road traffic – apart from the whole driving on the opposite side of the road and the car, the traffic here is nuts – people speed EVERYWHERE, have no regard for other drivers and have crazy road rules, like 4-way stop signs where everyone just takes a turn letting someone else through – instead of a round-about.
It’s a CRAZY, crazy country – absolutely love it while I spend half my time shaking my head in bewilderment.
