Ali Ballweg

I was a little disappointed that my last week of camp was spent off camp on another Day Camp, but I survived and even had a little fun.  We were at Peace Lutheran Church in Waunakee, WI (only like a half-hour from Sauk where I grew up) and we stayed there they whole week… Meaning we slept in one of the room and all our meals were brought there.  Which was a little strange considering a huge part of Day Camp is connecting to the whole church community…  But it did offer a lot of good free time and I even got to meet up with Tessa and Sarah for a walk and chat one night. I lost my voice and patience again this week, but that’s all part of the job.  had a lot of difficulty with gaining the children’s attention and respect, but things got better as they week progressed.   We also had the added challenge of coming up with nature activities to do, which Heidi and I tackled.  We made had they glue leaves onto paper, go on a leaf scavenger hunt, and chase bubbles.  I was actually pretty impressed with us!   There isn’t really anything more to say about the week, I’ll write more about the weekend (AKA- My farewell to SCBC) later!          

A bunch of staff went out to Bryce’s house last Saturday for his birthday and had a lot of fun.  I especially had a lot of fun exploring the old barns and fields with a few other girls…              

A group of eight of us staff decided to hike up a trail that hasn’t been used all summer to a beautiful outlook called Inspiration Point.  We then decided to wander further up and over until we made it to Jesus Point.  THEN we decided we hadn’t had enough adventure yet so we hiked/slid down the huge prairie hill down from JP… The whole adventure was very fun! 

Week 7 took me out to the Mighty Mississippi again, though this time with 8^th graders and canoes.  It was a blast was right up there as my favorite along with weeks 2 and 3.  I only had four campers (all incredible girls) and worked with Katie, Elise and Bryce (after Ross had to leave us due to ear infections in both his ears).  We spent Sunday-Tuesday afternoon on camp and then were at Blackhawk Campground from Tuesday until Thursday afternoon when we canoed down river to be picked up in Lansing.  It was a week full of laughter for many reasons…

Watching the campers practice swamping canoes was probably the highlight, so I’ll start there.  We had a few groups of campers who just couldn’t seem to tip their canoes.  One of them was a group of Nick’s (three of the seven boys were named Nick) who literally jumped out of their canoe.  Then we had a girl (Kami) who was turned facing the person paddling in the back of the canoe.  We were yelling out to her to turn around and they were screaming back, “We’re trying!” as they were attempting to turn their canoe around, not Kami herself.  When she finally got the message and turned around she started screaming, “Dead fish!”  We called back that it wouldn’t hurt her since it was dead to which she stood up and screamed, “IT’S ALIVE!”  I am proud to announce however that she rescued the fish by picking it up and dropping it back into the water, though none of us counselors saw it because we were all laughing hysterically on shore.  We also had several campers loose shoes in the foot of muck at the bottom and one of my campers was stuck for ten minutes as my other camper swam the canoe to shore all by herself.

Although we only had 21 campers total, they were horrible at listening and behaving.  The boys were especially bad about lights out at night so finally one night when we heard them goofing off near the outhouse we sent Bryce over to make them to do pushups.  Katie, Elise and I watched from a distance as they all got quiet and acted like they had done nothing wrong and then we laughed as they immediately all dropped to the ground. 

We did a lot of really ridiculous things throughout the course of the week including doing High School Musical style jumps into the pool at 7 am one morning, playing Ship to Shore in the water, duct taping the outside zippers of the tents shut so that we could tell if a camper went to a different tent during the night, eating lots of dry Happy Shapes because no one packed spoons, and singing The Song That Never Ends at talent show.

My four campers and I wore sequenced headbands all week and called ourselves the Fantabulous Five Sparkly Hippies.  They were amazing campers and I was able to have excellent bible studies and devotionals that related directly to them.  It felt great to know that I was providing them with verses and thoughts on problems they are directly dealing with verses just throwing out random bible study passages.  They also loved having my tuck them in at night and actually called me over to their tent one night when I forgot.

Ross had something extra special set up for the campers after worship on Thursday, and although it took longer than we thought, it was amazing!  The labyrinth was set up inside with four different stations to stop at along the path and their counselor sitting in the middle waiting to pray with them.  Each cabin went separately while the others sat outside of the RC listening to various stories.  The atmosphere inside the room was amazing… It was dark except for candles (which smelled good as well) and there was some really soothing music playing…  It was even an amazing experience for me even though I didn’t even walk through it and was just sitting in the middle.  This and Spirit Worship are both things I definitely plan on remembering and using in the future.

There were a lot of lasts week 7… My last week with my own campers, my last Christ Hike (I was the man with the withered hand and a disciple for the 5^th time this summer), my last Christmas cards, my last week on camp, and my last cabin cleaning…  Some of it (like the latter) won’t be missed… But most of it will be…

Oh and I forgot something else really important about week 7… I didn’t shower all week!  YEY!!!

Sugar Creek had a very special week with the very first ever Fine Arts week!  There were many different programs going on including Music, Theatre, Art, Norwegian and… Horse.  Horse camp was the biggest program with 5 counselors (4 of us lived in Wagons and 1 in the Discoverer cabins).  The campers had a lot of fun and enjoyed the extra time with the horses, however the disorganization and lack of communication was quite frustrating for all of us on staff.  At least a lot of insight was gained for next year. 

On a happier note, I had some great campers and did some cool things! We had quite a bit of free time this week and took advantage of that by going to the pool and canteen everyday, which was super nice.  We also got to package food for Feed My Starving Children again as well as spend an evening at Outpost (I was in charge of games and I made a new version of Ship to Shore and called it Barn to Pasture).  We had some awesome electives, one of which was lasso with Bryce and Jesse.  They had James dress up as a bull (complete with cups ducked taped to a hemet) and taught the kids how to lasso and hog tie.  It was quite hilarious for those involved and those of us who were just watching from afar. 

We got to go on 3 horse rides this week, one of which was an hour and a half (and my stirrups were too short so my knees killed the whole time).  I got Anders the Norwegian Fiord all 3 times so now he and I are great buddies.  Actually this week got me more comfortable around all the horses in general. 

I have a few funny stories from the week to share and the first one happened Sunday evening.  I was unrolling the window flap on the outside of our wagon when I touched and saw a bat!  I was so startled and scared that I screamed and jumped backwards off the ledge that is about 4 feet off the ground.  Another story is when Bryce bet about 15 of the campers that they couldn’t pull a post out of the ground with the lasso rope that he was having them stretch out.  Turns out he knew a few days earlier a few of the horses had loosened it and it needed to come out anyway so after a few minutes they were able to do it and were super proud of themselves.  We ended up having to have the closing festival/program in the barn (and barnyard) because of rain, but it was still fun and one of the activities was “So you think you can pull a wagon?” and all 5 of us counselors had some of our campers pull us around the barnyard in one of the wagons in the rain, which was great fun.

This week I worked with Elise, Sara H., Jesse and Ace (as well as working closely with Jo, Jessica, Heidi and Bryce) and I have to give them all credit for being amazing counselors even though many times we had no clue what was going on.  On top of that, Elise had several difficult campers and yet still was able to make it through the week in one piece.  Praise God for helping her and all of us through it!  We did it and now we only have 2 weeks left!  I’m off on Settlers this week (8th graders who canoe for 3 days on the Mississippi)! 

 Jo, Kim, Sara, Johnna and I went to the LaCrosse County Fair in West Salem last Saturday and had a blast!  I really enjoy taking animal pictures, I especially like the first pig one                

Jordan and Alyson were blessed with a beautiful day for their wedding on Lake Winona.  I didn’t take any pictures at the ceremony, but I did get a few outside at the reception.