New job at camp!

Well...Amanda and I are no longer senior counselors. As of Sunday last week, too many kids have been getting sick here at camp (SWINE FLU!). Also, there is a smaller amount of kids that come to ISCM 3rd session for many reasons (school, ramadan, etc). My group started out with 7 girls. One was homesick and left after 3 days. Another one was moved down to pioneers because she wasn't ready to be with the older kids. 2 more got homesick and left a few days ago. That left me with 3 campers. We merged my group with another senior group and that freed me up to work in the infirmary and help take care of the sick kids. The same thing happened with Heidi. Amanda was still working as a senior floater (when counselors have their day off, she takes over the group). Unfortunately she got sick too and had a high temperature. She was out of commission for a couple days and stayed isolated with the campers who were sick. The same thing happened to Heidi. Now they are both feeling better and Amanda is working in the infirmary with me.

Heidi is back and forth between the seniors and the infirmary. Our job is to pretty much wait on the sick kids hand and foot. We take them food, ask if they need anything, clean up, take away the food, bring them movies, etc. We also help out by checking temperatures and anything else they need us to do in the infirmary. It's not the most fun job but hopefully the kids are enjoying all the work we do for them! That's all for now, have a lovely day!

Ally

Amanda's Second Session at Camp

Hello Friends!
We are almost finished with the first week of our last session of camp. Ally and I are on movie duty right now - basically we are sitting in a room with some campers watching a movie. I thought this would be a good time to give you a little recap of my past 3 weeks.
I started out the session with 8, 13 or 14 year old girls. I had 4 campers from London, one from Saudi, one half Saudi - half Austrian, one from Venezuela and one from NYC. 6 of the girls were returning campers and 3 were new.

Throughout the three weeks of the session, we took part in many activities all around camp. We did fencing, sailing, climbing, trampoline, tennis, volleyball, swimming, fitness, music, drama, circus, magic, basketball, soccer, karate and so many more. All activities are lead by specialists and are 50 minutes long and we had 5 activities per day. Two days were also set aside for our overnight hike - which I already posted about!

We also had four excursions throughout the session. The first one was to Aqua Parc and Montreux and the second one was to the Olympic museum and Lausanne.

Then we had excursions to go river rafting (which I think was my favorite activity all session) and hiking up to a glacier. The excursions were so much fun! We got to get away from camp and hang out with other groups. I don’t have any pictures from the river rafting trip because we couldn’t have our cameras but it was so much fun. We basically had 3 groups of campers in three different boats and we paddled down a freezing river and jumped off, got pushed off, and pushed each other off into the freezing water…. So fun!

Each night, there are evening activities lead by the counselors. Evening activities include a fashion show, stunt night, casino night, walking into town for fireworks on Swiss Day, and of course, the ever so popular diskos.

Its hard to explain everything that we did, but that is a basic recap of my past 3 weeks. My campers were tough at times, but also a joy. 3 weeks with 14 year old girls can be hard work, but I was sad to see them go at the end. After having my own group for 3 week, I am excited to now be a floater (basically a sub) and work with all the different groups of senior girls this session.

Enjoy the pictures : )

Lots of Love,
Amanda

Excursion to Lausanne!

For the second excursion during the second session, the seniors went to Lausanne! Amanda and I were especially excited for this trip because there is a Starbucks in this town :)

Just like the last excursion, I joined along with Amanda and the rest of the senior groups, but this time I got off work at 5am so I had a couple more hours to sleep!

The first stop we made was the Olympic Museum. It was amazing! I mean, it really is THE museum of the olympics! This is a picture of me standing under the olympic record height for high jump. GEEZ! How can someone jump that high?? They had all the torches from the games, clothing worn by athletes, etc. There was also a section called Heroes and it was somewhat themed like a comic book. Here is Amanda running in a race! Hahaha :)Both Amanda and I would love to go back, it was such an awesome museum!!

After our allotted time at the museum, we sat by the lake and ate lunch. The food we get on every excursion is the same: tuna, roast beef, or cheese sandwich, salted chips, an apple, iced tea juice box, and a mars candy bar.

The buses drove us into town and we had a few hours to spend in Lausanne. Of course, the first thing we did was go to Starbucks!! Woo :) Then the counselors walked around for a bit and went shopping. We didn't go to H&M! That's a first...

One of the counselors, Christoph, is from Lausanne so we had our own tour guide for the day! It was a fun excursion, but probably the last one Amanda and I will go on together :(

Have a lovely day :)

Ally

Peculiar Thought of the Week!

So as each session comes to an end, each counsellor collects goods from their campers. As a part of the tradition, today all my girls filled up my backpack with miscellaneous items such as shampoo, conditioner, sun cream, lotion, etc. that they were planning on throwing away instead of taking home after camp. Ally and Heidi and Erika did this last session as well, so at the moment we have bags in our bathroom filled with toiletry items. Most things are half full but we always have enough supplies. Living with 4 girls – I have come to find out that we go through shampoo and conditioner very quickly. We have put away all our own essentials and now rely on supplies from the campers. In 3 weeks we have managed to go through three different kinds of shampoo and conditioner and started our 4th today.
This thought got me thinking….. You know when you think about something random and then it channels other thoughts and eventually you are thinking about something completely random but somehow it all manages to weave together? Well that’s what happened to me in the shower today. I started thinking about shampoo and ended thinking about being a soccer mom who loves Costco – let me further explain.
So I started this thought process when I ran out of shampoo and got another bottle out of our bag of goodies from our campers. Then I started thinking about how quickly we go through this stuff – living with 4 girls. Then that made me think about how I want to have 4 kids, and I wonder when I have kids, if I will be needed to replace their shampoo and conditioner as often as I am here at camp. Then that made me think about the Acosta family and how quickly they go through things at their house with 4 children as well. That made me think about buying in bulk – therefore the Costco comes in because I will most definitely need to buy things in bulk. So I have come to the conclusion that (when I have a family of my own) I will be a Volvo driving soccer mom who’s favourite store is Costco to keep up with my family. So there you have it, my peculiar thought of the week – all because of shampoo!! : )
You know you love me and my random thoughts,
Amanda

Second Session Pictures!

Yesterday I was able to upload some of my pictures from this session, so check them out if youre interested!!! There are pictures from my overnight hike, glacier excursion, aqua park excursion, geneva excursion, staff nights out and pictures from camp activities.
Enjoy :)
Amanda

http://picasaweb.google.com/ajyoung526

Flu Season...?

Its been a while since I have written a post! I cant believe how fast camp is flying by. This is the last week of the session, then we have new campers coming on Sunday (when Ally and I will both be senior counsellors together - yay!). This session has been fun and very very busy. I love going to all the different activities with my girls and the excursions as well. My head counsellor told me that I have the hardest and youngest group of senior girls, lovely right? Its been fun getting to know them and being around them but I am officially wiped out. Yesterday I woke up with the worst stomach ache and threw up a few times throughout the day (kinda makes me miss my mommy!) Good thing I have my best friend here with me :) She took care of me! She is amazing. Some kind of bug/flu is going around because a bunch of counsellors are not feeling well. It probably doesn’t help that I don’t get enough sleep and am busy all the time. But I was able to rest yesterday, so hopefully ill be on the road to recovery soon. Last night was also our Senior Counsellor dinner. We had amazing food with a tuna tartar appetizer, followed by a fruit and spinach salad and filet minion and a baked potato (ally was in heaven). The dessert was tiramisu. All of the senior counsellors went around telling their favorite camp memories thus far and after every story, we all cheers’ed with wine. We finished the evening off with an Alp Tea flip cup tournament. It was a great evening. I just wish I was feeling better so I could have enjoyed it more, oh well. My girls are at an activity right now, and I just finished writing up all my camper reports so I better go hang out with them.
Hope all is well back home and hope everyone is enjoying their summers!!
Lots of Love, Amanda

Relaxing Day at the Apartment

Yesterday, I decided that I was going to hang out the apartment and lounge around all day since I had to be up til 7am on today. I woke up when Amanda, Heidi, and Erika were getting ready for the day and couldn't fall back asleep, so I started my day off by laying in bed watching Friends! Nobody knows how much I actually love this show. It has a special place in my heart :) When I grow up (which is now...) I want to have a group of friends like that and an apartment like Monica's where everyone is always welcome! I would just love that. Plus, the show is hilarious and always put me in a good mood-or an even better mood than I was already in!

Anyways, moving on from that! I ended up napping later in the morning and followed it with a hot bath while reading some more of Eat Pray Love. Then I sat out on the balcony, catching some rays and z's! I keep reading this book, but only a few pages at a time. It's a great book, but I feel like it'll take me the whole summer to read it! I started it before I left, then set it aside while I read a couple other books at the beginning of the trip, and now I'm back to it. I'll let you know when I finally finish it. But I would recommend reading it!

It was an extremely lazy day for me, but it kept me awake all night! It was followed with another lazy day of sleeping. I fell asleep this morning around 8:30 and slept all afternoon! While I was sleeping, Amanda was at the glacier enjoying the sun and snow :)

Happy Swiss day/1st day of August! (I'm sure we'll have a blog for Swiss day soon),
Ally

Aquapark and Montreux Excursion!

On Tuesday, Amanda and half of the other senior counselors took their kids on an excursion to aquapark and Montreux. Even though I worked until 7am on Tuesday, I woke up at 9am (after 1.5 hours of sleep) to join them! The bus ride was over an hour, so I slept for a while before we arrived at the water park. Pretty much all of the counselors were sleeping the whole ride there!

Aquapark is this semi-large indoor water park along the coast of lake Geneva. Malorie, Amanda, and I headed straight for the lake and sunbathed for a good hour on the grass. Then Amanda and I went back inside for half and hour to go on some of the slides. It was so much fun! I"m not gonna lie, I was scared to go on the rides- only because I didn't want to lose my suit. Luckily that didn't really happen...

After the short amout of time we had at aquapark we ate our lunches and got back on the buses that took us to Montreux. Again, counselors fell asleep. Something about the noisy kids and buzzing bus makes it so easy to pass out! Hahaha. We only had about an hour in Montreux, which was just enough time to visit H&M (of course...it's the only store I have been to about 5 times already. Its always the first stop on our excursions!) I tried on a red dress-with pockets!!-but wasn't sure if I wanted to spend money on it. Amanda and I decided that if she tried it on and liked it too, we would both buy it! Well, we came back to camp with a brand new red dress :) We walked along the waterfront and took some fun pictures :) Just like in Geneva!

In Montreux they have these awnings that stick out in the middle of the sidewalk and hang down about 5 feet from the ground. If you aren't watching where you walk, you might just run into one. One of the girl campers wasn't watching where she was going and ran her head straight into one. (I almost did it too). We were afraid she had a concussion so her counselor kept her awake on the ride home. When the camper started feeling queasy, Amanda sat next to her and held her hair back when she wasn't doing so well. That's how awesome Amanda is!!

Other than the injury, it was a great excursion and I wish we went to aquapark more than just once this summer!

love-love-love

Ally