Camp: The First Two Weeks

It took 17 hours to drive to camp.

17 hours in my car from Georgia to Massachusetts. We did half one day and half the next. Once we got to New York, it didn't even let up when we got to camp. Once there, I was anxious of course. This is a place I had never been to and would've never tried to work at if I didn't have an experienced person I trusted go with me. 

I can be a quiet person once I meet new people. It's half because I'm an introvert and the other half is because I like to observe people and how they are when I first start spending time with them.

I'm not judging you but I low key am, but not in a bad way. I just want to see what vibes I get from you and I'm interested in how you interact with other people. Call it weird if you want, but I do enjoy people watching anyway. This is why I wondered if it would take me all summer to make a few really good friends. People from England, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, and states that I had never been to before, all in one small town in a state that I can't properly pronounce. (I literally can't say Massachusetts correctly. It's sad) I expected it to be a little jarring and to feel out of place for a while but I was so wrong.

I became friends with a few of the Kitchen Staff people as soon as we arrived. Everyone would arrive at camp at different points during the first two weeks and even throughout the summer as people got fired and pre-counselor people rolled in.

I have to make a note that the Kitchen Staff wasn't treated that well at all. They got paid less, mainly because they were international and most international staff got paid less than those of us already in America since the camp paid for their flights over. Usually? But they were all awesome people! They worked from before we woke up, until after dinner and later to prep for all of our meals and snacks. They weren't initially invited to a few events that we as counselors had to participate in and I got the initial vibe that the camp wanted them to be seen only when it was time to eat and that they didn't expect us counselors to want to hang out with them. Maybe I'm wrong but that's how it felt. If the staff was all much older, then maybe I get that but they were the same age as the rest of us.

Everyone was all about 18 to late twenties and me being 24 at the time was basically old since most of the counselors were younger than that. More than half were legal drinking age and that sucked for international staff coming from places where they can drink before 21. 

Anyway, by the end of the two weeks, I felt like I had been at camp for at least a month and I was extremely close with so many people. Maybe its because we had to sleep in large cabins right next to each other and endure a night of a fellow counselor making demonic sexual possession noises in her sleep. I'm not even making this up.

After another wave of counselors showed up, that night, someone was having a bad dream and was making noises that we all were going to ignore the next morning until someone broke the ice about it. I thought someone was low key dying or being killed in their sleep and so, I turned over and ignored it because I had no time to be a witness to a crime in that particular situation. If Jason Vorhees were to come in and start hacking away at people, I would save myself because I watch way too many horror movies to honestly want to save others around me.

Besides that, I made amazing friends and learned about how crappy American chocolate is once I got to taste candy from England and Australia. We really need to work on taking better are of ourselves somehow cause other countries seem to have better food, cheaper food, more comfortable vibes, less angry people, and they have less guns so I'm inclined to believe they're a wee bit safer for a lot of us.

On top of learning how to properly rock climb, zip line, and work a ropes course in the trees, I spent a lot of time wanting to know what everyone's experience was like when weird stuff would happen.

An all girls camp run by two cis white men was already odd enough but once you realized that they were basically afraid of the campers parents and didn't care about the counselors much, then camp started to show its true colors. Also, most of the campers were Jewish and I didn't even realize that until my campers corrected my use of the word "Christmas" when describing the string f lights I brought for the cabin and told me they were "fairy" lights because they were Jewish and didn't celebrate Christmas. Day one man. Day one.

We all for the most part, unless you were alumni, which meant that you went to the camp as a camper and then decided to come back as a counselor, felt like no one higher up had our backs on anything. Thus we had to try to look after ourselves. When a child is upset over the fact that their maid does their bed back home and they refuse to because "why should you even care?", it's your fault as the counselor when your bunk looks like crap. Despite the fact that your campers refuse to clean and listen no matter what you try to compromise with. But I'll get to all of that later. 

The first two weeks were blissful as were the last 3 days or so because the kids weren't there and you could hangout with others and be less stressed.

The bar you could go to that was closest to us was the most dingiest bar I have ever been in. It was in a small town surrounded by camps so no matter how crappy you thought it was, you would find yourself hanging out there and ordering from a short selection of drinks while mingling with counselors of other camps. The fun part was the twenty or so minute walk you had to do to get there and back. Prime time for a scary movie killer to pick you off at night. The things we did to try to keep sane and to forget where we were and for how long were what kept some of us from just leaving. Obviously these feelings came later once the campers showed up and we couldn't do anything.

The most fun, however, came when you started to "train" and prepare for when the campers would show up and you start to wonder if you made the right decision being there because they made it seem like they had to put a warning and a bad story with everything. They tried to give us a realistic view of what it could be like for the summer with mentioning the good and the bad but it just made me question why certain situations happened anyway. Plus, why do so many people get fired every year? Why are you making it seem like this a boot camp? Why are there less than 10 minority counselors and campers combined? Red flags.

I get that we're all human, thus we are dumb to some degree and will make dumb decisions from time to time that we will look back on and cringe. It comes with living life, but some people seem like they just don't have any sense.

Not everyone there would make it to the end of the summer. We lost like two people in the first two weeks and I know one of them for sure decided to leave on their own accord because the money was crap despite the fact that they came to come to America to travel after. That's what 99% of international staff do after camp. They travel around America visiting places I've never been to and I've lived here my whole life. However, the money they made at camp would be gone by the time they got home but it was worth it for the most part to be able to come here and explore for a few weeks before going back home. 

I even got to explore a little after, which was awesome, but bittersweet.

The campers arrival was the most anti-climatic moment for me because I was more nervous than excited and once I realized the way the majority of the girls behaved, I knew this would be an odd summer with problems.

The kicker is that they were all mostly Democrats, apparently, and it made me realize that all political parties have their outliers that baffle you. Like a Republican for gay rights I guess. Maybe? IDK. But the privilege was real.

Most of us had never encountered such privileged children who didn't even really want to be at camp. It was so odd! They claimed not to know or want to make their beds, or clean up after themselves, or follow any rules despite knowing that there were rules. it's not like these rules were enforced on them anyway. They could do whatever they wanted because the second they complained about not getting their way, their parents and the owners wanted to tell you to let them be.

We were even told to watch them as they wrote their letters home to parents and family members so that they didn't say anything negative. I should've ran when I heard that because WTF? That to me meant "Don't let their parents know that camp isn't Disney World and they actually have to listen and follow the rules to make camp go smoothly or else they'll take their child back home to their mansion and maids and let them chill at home all summer."

I should probably just do a video series about camp because there's just so much to expand off of.