ACA Home Forums Cedarledge, anyone?

Flying to England overnight was terrible. This little kid kept crying and keeping me awake. So frustrating. And then I had to stay up all day because I arrived around noon. Blargh. Never flying at night again lol.

I find that it helps with the jet lag - which strangely I dont get when I fly to the USA only when I fly home at the end! But I can imagine it would be pretty bad with crying children!

wow, what you guys will do to get to camp! I suppose I have a similar equivalent in that I drive to my camp which is 5-6 hours away from school after work on a Friday and come back on Sunday, all for a one night Dad/youth overnight. But at the same time, I know it doesn't compare since 22 hour flights/layovers are horrible! I did a 9 hour and then a 1-2 hour flight when I went to Germany but that's still only like half the time!

haha, everyone at camp was laughing at me because I was practically skipping through the mud on our way around camp and I would randomly sigh or say "yay!"

lol and I thought my 90 minute drive was bad...

It's worse than mine in the summer, 3 times worse actually. My drive from home/parent's house is 30-45 minutes but since this was a weekend event during the school year I went over for the fun of it. But yeah, I thought that was bad. I don't even want to know what it would be like to have to do a 22 hour flight to get to camp! Or even a 3 hour one!

I feel that the long commute helps me with my camp experience, I am 100% out of my element, in a new place, out of the "real world". different place, different scenery, different flora/fauna, etc.

My first year at camp it took me three days to get to camp - day one 3 buses and 13 hours to travel to the south of England, day 2 a train, a plane and mini bus ride stayed in a dorm on a day camp, day three - go get Social Secruity number, back to pick up more people at the airport then travel to camp via camps sisters camp further north in NH to drop people off and eventually got to at something like 9pm - I had left home at 7am 3days before that! Another year I did the over night bus to London and arrived at the airport aout 5 hours before check in opened I think that day I was up for about 40 hours straight - got to camp and pulled the best prank ever! Oh the things we do for camp

That makes a lot of sense, Layton. Camp used to be the place where I could be myself, but I've found that I am still my "old/camper" self at camp now. I pigeon-holed myself. I am on staff and I know this but I guess it's hard to explain. One example I can think of is when I do swear (which really isn't that often, but it does happen) the other staff that have known me a while will say ":O Giggles swore!" as if it is like the biggest shocker they could imagine. Heck, even the newbies seem to be kinda shocked when I swear. So I'm really looking forward to going to a new camp and starting out as my "now" self.

Wow, I can't even imagine that long of a trip. Sure, it will be a fairly long trip to my new camp, but nowhere near that long!

Haha, I do that too, Giggles! Now and then I swear in front of my wrangler friends just for the reaction it gets me. But it's kind of annoying when people just see me as over-the-top or laid-back, and don't take me seriously, just because I like to have fun at camp.

I'm like that, too. I swear very rarely, but the people who I have been working with for three years still say, "Beck, I've NEVER heard you swear before." even though they have :S

I swear everyday

I dont swear at at all so I could only imagine the reaction if I did!

I'm very careful about what I say in front of my girls and with customers, but I'm less restricted when I'm with friends. I try not to go overboard though.

Yeah, that's how I am, Munchy. I'm very good at censoring myself.

Oh man, so I was at Dad/youth overnight talking with one of the dads about rowboating and how many kids you could get in it or something like that and I said that I put my 6 kids in it. He looked at me and said, "You've got 6 kids?" hahaha It's been a while since someone didn't understand that my "kids" are any kids that I work with, like my campers! hehe

I've had that happen a lot! I mention my camp kids, or my students, and people give me a weird look... then I remember that some people give birth, rather than borrowing other peoples' children temporarily.

I told another Leader the other day that I now have 24 girls and someone else overheard me and looked at me weirdly. Yes, it would be strange for a 23 year old to have 24 daughters :P:P

haha, yeah when this dad said, "you have 6 kids?" I was wondering how old he thought I was! He seemed shocked but it wasn't a "holy crap is that even possible?!" shock, but more of a "wow, 6 kids is a lot of kids for 1 person/family" kind of downplayed shock. Sure he could just be really good at hiding stuff, but still. That's almost a moment where you don't want to hide your real shock! How old do you think i am that it's possible for me to have 6 kids?! I'm actually only 21! So while, yes it would biologically be possible to have that many, it's not even plausible/probable if he thought I was 26.

I get that kind of reaction when I am talking about my 30+ guides r 24 brownies! Fortunately I have lots friends who are either guiders or teachers so kinda get it!

One of my friends sort of did a double take when she complimented me on my hippie mural and I said, "Oh, thanks, my kids made that." It took her a minute to realize I was talking about my camp kids, but I think that was more because she had been drinking lol.

hehe - we did a mural in 07 on the doors of the cook out cupboards - looked amazing apart from where the painters had signed it - would have been better if they had done it across the bottom rather than up the side - but it was all painted by staff - dont think they trusted the kids!

I just finished up student teaching and my kids kept giving me those silly band things that are all the rage among third graders (http://www.sillybandz.com/ just incase you don't know) and I clearly had to wear them or they would have been upset and I'm at my other job once and someone goes "Heather, do you have enough of those stupid bracelets on?" and I was like "Oh, yeah, well I kinda have to wear them, my kids gave them to me." Now this woman is a coworker who's known me for 2 years and her mouth just drops and she goes 'You have kids?" and I was really attempted to say 'Yep, 10 girls and nine boys' but i didn't i just reminded her I was teaching lol.

I've never heard of those before, but I checked out the website. Anyone else have a feeling those are gonna pop up at camp this summer? Haha outrageous trading post product of the year, perhaps?
Indigo, remember those silly jellyfish yoyos that kept selling out like crazy at the TP? Kids like strange things. At least they are more wholesome than those stupid sex bracelets that were in fashion when I was in middle school, though.

I thought the jellyfish yoyos were super cool, but then I love stretchy, rubbery things.

Of course, back in my day (my MUCH younger day), we were into slap bracelets. All the cool kids had them. And guess who didn't?
That's right, me again!

The jellyfish yoyos were kind of fun to play with, but they always got gunk all over them because they were slightly sticky, and they just started to gross me out after a while.
I remember slap bracelets! After a while we weren't allowed to have them at school because we would hit each other with them.

I had a guy ask me to go to an event once. Then he told me he knew it was late notice, since I'd have to find a babysitter. When I told him I don't have kids, he made some comment about how I had talked about them, and he just assumed I had adopted several. Uh, no. I didn't really adopt 30 kids. They're just my students.