Session One Finished

My first of two, two week sessions is finally complete. There were a lot of rough patches during the session, but all in all I quite enjoyed it. There was a lot to enjoy, a lot of which reminded me of camp back home.

A basic day at American Village has you wake up and grab breakfast before two hours of ESL split up into 2 by a 15 minute recess. After ESL and just before lunch is perhaps the best part of the day, congress. Here there is usually a song, a skit, a cheer and some other random fun thrown in. Afterwards there is free time and then a couple of activities which relate to the daily theme. We have dinner around 7 before more free time and evening program. After evening program it is time for the kids to go to bed and the counselors to plan everything for the next day. This includes lessons and activities.

The day starts around 8am and runs until midnight or later most nights. A lot of work, a lot more then I was used to as a counselor at SVDP. It can also be more frustrating as well, due to the language barrier.

By the end of this session I did manage to connect with quite a few campers, including the ones I had in my own ESL class. It was kind of sad to see a lot of them go today. I am also however relieved that the first session is over and am quite excited for the upcomming session.

Now knowing what to expect, I can focuss more on doing more of my job and enjoying myself while doing my job even more. By the end of session I was (with encouragement from campers) comfortable singing camp songs in front of everyone by myself that most others did not know.

I have only left the camp twice, one came on my day off and the other was a camp wide trip. One day I took a walk with someone else who was off and had a couple beers in this very small village about a thirty minute walf from La Mazure. It was very small and reminded me a lot of the town in Beauty and the Beast.

The camp wide trip was to a famous site, Le Mont St Michael. It deserves a blog post of its own and hopefully I will also be able to upload some of the pictures.