Whistle While You Work

Here I am at camp, finally! Tim picked me up, along with my new camp friends Hannah and Rachel from the airport and we headed off to camp. New York is beautiful, full of quaint little towns and elegant lakes. Camp is, as I imagined, beautiful. You know how you come up with the way things look in your head only to be contradicted when the real thing comes along? Well, that happened to me. I think the reason this happened was because I spent hours (okay, maybe not hours) looking at the pictures online and piecing the places together in my head. Then I came to camp and everything looked a little bit different than I thought, which isn’t a bad thing at all! The camp is better than expected! But now I have to rearrange everything in my head so I don’t end up in the wrong places. The camp is great in size, but most of the buildings are smooshed close-ish together. The lake is beautiful and the lake front accommodations line the beach.

We arrived at camp and scarffed (I was that hungry) down some turkey, rice, and mixed veggies so we could catch the last bit of staff fellowship. Now before you think to yourself, turkey and rice? That sounds like cafeteria food to me, keep in mind that the head chef, Lance Nitahara, of one of the dining halls is a celebrity. At least, in my eyes. He was a competitor on the Food Network show, Chopped, and came in second! If you’d like to check out the episode, click here.

The first day we got our preseason schedules. The Episcopalians have a weekend retreat here every year so we spent yesterday preparing for their arrival. I was doing house keeping the whole day, which consisted of dusting Wigwam (one of the buildings here with a cute little library), washing the windows of some of the rooms, and swabbing the deck of some of the porches. Let me tell you, house keeping is not for the faint of heart. They do work! By the time five o’clock rolled around, I was about ready to drop. But thanks to God’s perpetual strength, I was able to end the day with a smile on my face. But let’s just say, I slept very well that night. The rest of this weekend, I shall be on dish duty in Hill dining, and I’m ready to get down and dirty with some unwashed pots and pans.

The staff here is, for lack of a better word, awesome. I’ve already met so many wonderful people, and not all of the staff has even arrived yet! Every single one of them have hearts that desire to serve the Lord and I’ve never been around so many people as genuine as them. They’re fun, lively, sweet, and full of God’s love.

I’m sure I could say more about my first day, but I know how tedious it can get reading a long blog. So to sum up my first couple of days here at camp in a few words: Camp is great!