So I am back for the weekend! And believe it or not, I actually like Chenoa. I mean, its not home like Farnsworth is (yes, we do refer to it as home), but I could work there for a summer if I couldn't work at Farnsworth. It's nice.
There are 6 CIT ones. Can you guess how many of them are Chenoans? Uno. The other five of us go to Farnsworth. What about our two counselors? Cero. We were very confused at times on how to do things at Chenoa, normally there is a staff member from Chenoa also doing CIT, but for some reason we didn't get one. So we ask them, and they have no idea either.
There are some differences that I really didn't expect though. Many of them don't really make a difference in camp life, but it made me a bit homesick (meaning for Farnsworth, not my actual home).
- The tables are half the size. With the same amount of people sitting at each one.
- They don't use silverware racks. According to Bob, Farnsworth is the odd one, and most camps don't use silverware racks, they put the silverware in cups like at Chenoa. When we visited Farnsworth for dinner we got so excited when the silverware racks and might have jumped up and down a little bit. It was that traumatic.
- They have a nice waterfront. (Not everything is negative) It actually has a beach.
- The hoppers don't just get the food, they have to do EVERYTHING. Like scrape, clear the table, etc. I felt sooo rude not helping.
- All the campers watch the LBDs. (Which is scary if you're doing your first LBD like me.)
- They eat chicken almost everyday. (Fun for vegetarians right? NOT.) The food at Farnsworth is soooo much better, even staff at Chenoa say so.
- Allll (except Rocky Top where the CITs usually stay, just not us) the units have electricity! Which is like the reverse of Farnsworth where like one unit has electricity. Who can guess which camp is newer?
- There isn't a central main camp, its spread out. Many more trees inbetween everything.
- The Program Center includes art. It isn't separate there, same staff and everything.
It's been a pretty busy two weeks. There was a Sock Hop [where I did hair styles... yeah, who knew I would end up there (not by choice)], a Yo-yo that we lead teaching Farnsworth songs, and I failed at making friendship bracelets. I shadowed a unit, Baby Boot Camp, in which they were becoming babysitter trained. It would not have been my first choice (or second, or third...) for a unit, but I still enjoyed being with my campers. Hopefully I'll get a unit more suited for me for the next session.
We did our solos!! Mine actually ended up turning into more of a duo, but that was because of things outside of my control. I was supposed to solo at Chimney Cove, a place across the lake that you have to canoe to, with Pickles canoeing with me, but us setting up far enough away there that they would still be solos. But, as my luck goes, the thunder and lightning started just as we were going to leave. So we ended up going to Beaver Pond (and getting driven there in a van). It's pretty small there, but we were able to set up our camps out of sight of each other, though we were still within hearing distance of each other. I was the only CIT not to use a tent, I tarp-ed it.
We had to cook dinner together (which was good for me since I am not good at starting fires and it was raining) because there was only one fire circle. It was a one match fire in the rain!! Pretty amazing I might say, though it was all Pickles, I could just barely keep it alive while she cooked her dinner (but I did collect wood if that counts...).
But I did the bear bagging which was pretty amazing. I got it up really high, but it did take me many, many attempts, one of which ended up with a rock almost flying into Pickles' head. I was in my tarp by myself when I started to hear voices. I tried to figure out if I was imagining them, or if they were really real. I went with imagining because we all know how crazy I am. But then they got louder and started yelling "PICKLES". And then I hear "CADENCE, ECKS?" I realized that it was just our counselors coming to check on us and I wasn't going crazy. When I was trying to sleep that night I heard things walking around me that were at least Pickles sized, if not bigger. And it wasn't Pickles. I heard coyotes. It starting raining and thundering massively. I wasn't sure whether I would rather be eaten or struck by lightning. Around 2am Pickles came to my tarp because her tent had become a puddle. I told her she could come and sleep under my tarp, which was totally dry, except my feet, which stuck out of the end because the tarp was too short for me. I didn't go back to sleep after 2am, and ended up getting pushed out (by accident) from under my tarp and out into the rain. I was rained on. And wet.
I DID MY FIRST LBD!!!! For those of you who don't know, LBD stand for Lost Bather Drill. Lifeguards search the water for a brick that represents a lost person. All lifeguards on camp are required to participate, even if they're not staff (which means me!). It was so much easier than I thought it was going to be.
We went on a three day canoe trip. Polaris taught us The Life of a Voyageur song, all five verses (even though you're not supposed to know them all) so we can pass them on to other generations of campers. She also taught us many off camp songs, some of which we made up new verses to. The first night we shared a campsite with some campers from a Farm and Wilderness camp. On the second day after we arrived at our campsite (really early too, because we are super fast canoe-ers), Simon, Cadence, and I went back out onto the river to pump water. After we had about an inch of water (which took us forever) our water pump broke. So we kidnapped Cadence and I paddled the canoe backwards upstream to a dock to ask if they had water. Simon and Cadence went to ask for water (except Cadence didn't really do anything) while I watched the canoe. The third day we arrived in Thetford and went to Farnsworth. (We told everyone we paddled all the way from Chenoa, but really we started north of Thetford.) Since we canoed so fast we got there too early and were confined to Windigo for the afternoon, but we got to eat dinner there which was nice.
I got to see Harry Potter at the drive in! But the sad thing is, I slept through most of it because it was the night after my solo and I had been up for 20 some odd hours. I'm just going to have to see it again. I also climbed the rock wall at chenoa, but didn't make it all the way up. It felt like claustrophobia (even though I don't have it, thats what I imagine it would feel like), even though I was in a nice wide space, I just had nowhere to move to.
Oh and I have a camp name now! It's Coda, as in D.S. al Coda in music. I was opposed to it in the beginning because it reminded me of that bear in the disney movie Brother Bear (or something of the sort), but everyone said I was a bear, and kept bothering me about it, so I gave in. And now I like it. Everyone else's camp names are: Loki, Simon, Escapé, Indi, and Pickles. Also one of our counselors has a new camp name Polaris (Polo for short, we decided camp names shouldn't have more than two syllables), because she didn't like her old camp name Ecks (pronounced X).
Sorry for the extreme longness of this post, though it really only covers a tiny bit of what's happened in these past few weeks. I head to Farnsworth tomorrow!! So I'm off to bed, going to get a good nights sleep before then. PLEASEEEEE send me letters!!! If you send me a letter I promise I'll write back!
ADDRESS:
EMILY DIPADOVA
CAMP FARNSWORTH
THETFORD, VT 05074
Love,
Em
La Canción: The Life of a Voyageur. The recording of it isn't in the right tune, and isn't as quiet as it should be, but it's all I could find. Though the good thing is, is that it is just the first two verses, as it should be. (Though some of the lyrics are wrong/different.)
