Last week of camp!! It is hard to believe that this summer has flown by already. The kids have grown on my like mold on cheese and I am having a hard time parting with them. They are smart, funny, and sometimes a little outrageous; I can't get enough of them. We celebrated different countries this week and it was the perfect way to end our summer.
This week I was adopted by a wonderful family!! Camp Adventure does an adopt a counselor program where a family takes a counselor under their wing and will take them to dinner or invite them over for dinner or anything they fill fit. This week Emily (another 5 - 6 year old counselor) where invited to go out to dinner by one of my little girl's family. They took us to this wonderful Brazilian dinner!! They had a huge buffet of black beans and rice, fritters, meat, cheese, bread, and numerous different kinds of salads. There was an area where you could watch them cook many different kinds of meat over an open flame. After we finished with the food from the buffet, they come around with the meat from the fire on a huge skewer and slice it directly onto your plate. We had probably 8 different kinds of meat - amazing! We then got a little dessert of pineapple that had been crusted with cinnamon and sugar and then warmed over the fire as well. It was a wonderful meal and the Kiersteads were a wonderful family to spend our evening with. THANK YOU!!
Wednesdays are always a night we do family dinners with all the Camp Adventure people - Aquatics, Child Development Center workers, and Day Camp. This week we got to have a POOL PARTY!! This was by far the highlight of the week! For family dinners we usually come to gather and mingle and play games. This time we spent the evening in the swimming pool! It seems silly because I spend every day at the pool with my kids, however I am constantly on alert because there are a ton of kids and I have to be in 5 different directions at one time. This pool party gave me the opportunity to jump off the diving board, go down slides, and just relax and enjoy myself! We had a taco bar for dinner and played in the pool. It was an absolute perfect evening! We also did silly awards at our last family dinner. Everyone was given an award for "Mostly Likely To …" I had the pleasure of taking away Most Likely to Walky Talky Audrey. Audrey is our supervisor and I am constantly calling her over the our 5 - 6 year old tent for something. Whether I have something to ask her/tell her, having a situation with a kid, having a situation with anything. She spends a lot of time at our tent. This was the perfect way to end our summer with a good laugh for everyone!
Camp Adventure at the end of every summer program does a special celebration called Dessertfest. We also did a Dessertfest at WSU after we had completed all our training and we could invite our families to come and see what we were up to. On Thursday Camp Adventure Naples, Italy had the pleasure of presenting to the parents and anyone else who showed up what exactly we have been up to. Each age group prepared a song or skit to perform for dessertfest and we sang God Bless the USA (a very special song to these people - you could probably imagine). All the parents were asked to bring some kind of dessert to share and after our performances we all got treats! It was pretty chaotic because there were a lot of people there, but it went fairly smoothly and we didn't lose any kids!! HOORAY! We did not have a lot of time because we had to stick with our usual bus schedule, therefore I did not get a lot of time to mingle with parents and that was pretty disappointing. I spent the whole time wandering around trying to keep track of all my kids!! It was definitely a relief when everyone was accounted for and we were sending our kids to their final destination.
The last day of camp we had a special "World Fair" the kids had a chance to travel different countries (or tents in this case) and play different games or do different activities that relate to the country. It was a very crazy last day, but we had a chance to say our good byes and spend a little time signing shirts and posters and taking pictures with our kids. However because of the chaos, by the end of the day I realized it was time send them on their way. They definitely will stick with me for a long time. They were wonderful kids to spend my summer with and I will miss them!
This week I also had to get all my belongings together to get ready to head home! I have accumulated a lot of stuff over the summer and it is proving to be quite a task. I also have been living in Italy for 10 weeks now and I just have a lot of stuff period!
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