Traveling Circus

Well, my summer is now going to be consumed by little children.  I started my job as a counselor at a day camp 2 weeks ago.  It's been really fun so far, but it can get pretty crazy and wild at times.  Our days start at 9 in the morning and go until 5 in the afternoon.  But, since I am a counselor I get the privilege of getting there at 8 in the morning and staying until at least 5:30.  Needless to say, I am exhausted when I get home!  Anyway, the camp is divided into about 10 groups and each counselor is in charge of a group of about 8 kids plus or minus a few.  In my group, I have 8 kids and they range from ages 5 to 8.  They are some of the most precious children ever and even though they can get VERY rowdy at times, I just love each and every one of them.  Each day, we start off the day with chapel and then we have 2 rotations of either music, reading, arts and crafts, and sports and then we have lunch.  After lunch, we have 2 more rotations and then it's time for them to head home.  Each week, we have different field trips that we take so that the kids aren't cooped up inside all week.  This past week we went on 3 field trips.  On Monday we went to Bonclarken, which is up in the mountains.  The kids got to swim, climb on the rock wall, go on the zipline, and then go on the swing.  It was a lot of fun and I think the kids really enjoyed it!  On Tuesday, the younger kids got to go to Hollywild animal park for the second half of the day.  We got to go on a safari ride and feed some animals and it was a really great trip for the kids.  On Thursday, everyone took a trip to Columbia to visit the zoo and state museum.  Two words, traveling circus.  It was probably the most chaotic trip I have every been on.  First of all when we got to the church where our camp is held, the power was out. There had been a really bad storm the night before, as usual this summer, and so a ton of people had no power.  On top of that, one of the charter buses we were supposed to take broke down and so we ended up leaving Greenville an hour and a half later than we were supposed to.  Once we got to the zoo, it was around 12:15 and so we had only about an hour to explore the zoo before we had to be back on the bus to head over the museum.  Once we got to the museum, we ate a little lunch and then we had 45 minutes to look around the museum...not enough time.  Once the kids got into the museum, they went absolutely nuts.  They were running around and chasing each other and completely disobeying everything we were telling them.  There is a science floor in the museum where they have some interactive displays that kids can play with.  We might as well have destroyed the entire floor.  It like a horror movie haha they were EVERYWHERE and it just mass chaos.  When I say traveling circus, it is an understatement.  Needless to say the Columbia field trip was a disaster.  Overall though, I am really enjoying being a counselor and it has been so much fun getting to know and play with these kids.  Even though they can be hard to deal with at times, a lot of them don't know any better and so you just have to keep that in mind.  I will definitely post something again soon, because trust me I will never be short on stories to tell!