The title is, of course, the opening line from 'Just around the river bend' from Pocahontas. It was, after two days, the final decision for our debrief song for the easter activity days. At our final debrief Kyra put on her ipod so we could chill to some music while we thought about our feelings and all that. Shuffle is everyman's curse, it played taylor swift, avenue Q and kiss the girl without anyone, majorly, noticing but in our final reflection everyone was being totally silent, you just heard 'is this from Pocahontas?!?' from our debrief leader. I guess you had to be there. everyone laughed and that kind of signaled the end of our debrief sesh.
As we didn't have an official debrief song we had a few contenders; 'Here comes the Sun', 'I've got nothing' for the lines 'look into my eyes see I'm acting crazy' and 'nothing in my heart but you' and 'Let's Dance to Joy Division' for the line 'everything is going wrong but we're so happy'. I'm pleased with our final choice though which brings me back to the title.
I work with kids a lot but I love going on camp because nobody else in the world (I may be exaggerating) gets to do what we get to do. Our Eddie Rice tradition is that we do one-on-one buddying, so you get the immense privilege of spending time really getting to know a child. But that's not what I wanted to share yet. I love the quote because every time I go one camp I get to meet such special little people, even if you've gone on a million camps you will not encounter the same thing twice. And even over the two days of an activity day, it brings a little spark of joy into my life.
My two buddies were beautiful, I had a 9 year old boy the first day and a 14 year old girl the second. And I am so grateful I got to spend time with each of them. And all the other buddies I encountered during the days. I loved being detectives with my buddy and spending the whole time trying to figure out 'who stole easter', spying on people behind doors and bushes and pointed at people and saying 'hmmm.... very suspicious' and finally glaring down the people responsible because we were so outraged they could do such a thing. I loved dancing and evil laughing and talking in a made up language and having her exclaim 'your as crazy as I am', seriously my second buddy is the coolest person I have ever met, she is like me and my friends but she's only 14, she knows exactly who she is. She is amazing. I loved gushing over Bollywood actors with our resident expert. And playing who wants to be a millionaire then dancing Bollywood style out to the car singing 'Jai Ho' (in our defense, it's the only song we knew) before running after the car when she went home. I loved hearing a little voice say 'Katherine' in the pool before turning around to get a face full of water but receiving the biggest smile, this from a little boy who is hard to engage is any activities and said that his buddy from last camp and his buddy yesterday were his best friends. I love that we can bring joy, but I also love that they bring just as much joy to our lives.
As an aside I think it is hilarious that after I was given the role of taking charge of our team (our team leader was still on a bus with a few kids and my buddy) I decided it might be a good idea to play red rover, we had a lot of boys. It was going ok but then one of the big buddies fell over in the mud. A few minutes later the entire team was covered in the stuff. To make it worse we had some girls come to observe how we do camps, they got just as muddy. Welcome to ERC. See, and you wonder why I've only been team leader once. It was a running thing from then on if we had a water fight we'd also have a mud fight. One of the support was like 'it's always your (our) team, all the others are ok but you WANT to add mud to the water'.
There seems like a good place to stop, though I just want to add that after said water fight my buddy ran up to me to ask if I was ok. That kid is going to be alright.
Until Next time
Katherine
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