Nanoose Bay - Kids Camp

A Typical Day
This is just to summarize the routine that we had every day.

08:00am - Breakfast
08:45am - Clean cabins and get washed up.
09:15am - Morning chapel service
10:30am - Activity Block #1 (crafts, sports, games, dance, etc.)
11:45am - Get washed up for Lunch
12:00pm - Lunch
01:00pm - Quiet Time in the cabins (give the kids a rest)
01:30pm - Canteen (kids get treats and loaded up on sugar), counselors head to meeting
02:15pm - Activity Block #2
03:30pm - Activity Block #3
04:45pm - Get washed up for Dinner
05:00pm - Dinner
06:30pm - Evening chapel service
07:30pm - Snacks
08:00pm - Get cleaned up for bed
08:30pm - Bedtime
09:00pm - Lights Out
09:30pm - Staff devotionals away from kids
10:30pm - Staff bedtime

Wait, That Wasn't Rain
On the first evening, I was "sleeping" in the bunk, surrounded by noisy kids. Everyone was supposed to be sleeping by 9:00pm, but one kid just kept on talking and yelling. After half an hour of constantly being waken up, I decided to stand next to the kid's bunk and watch him. He wouldn't say anything when I was watching and he'd pretend to go to sleep. Every few minutes, he'd peek to see if I was still there, and I sure was. Lets just say I was standing there until 10:30pm, in the dark.

That evening, it started raining and at one point, I woke up. I heard a sudden rush of water; I thought nothing of it and assumed it was water going through the gutters. The next day during chapel service, I noticed that one of my kids smelled really really bad. So, I forced all of my kids to shower. Even though the kids were only required to shower once every two days, they were showering because they smelled funky.

Upon inspection of my cabin that evening by other staff, they discovered that my smelly kid had wet the bed the night before. Hmmm.... so that rushing water sound wasn't the rain last night. So, we had to discretely remove the kid's sleeping bag, clean, and put some diapers on the kid. This is an interesting fact about kids that I seem to have forgotten.

The Food Negotiator
I always thought that some of my friends were ridiculously picky about their food, but I discovered that some kids are even more picky. I had one kid who refused to eat anything for dinner, and this isn't good at all because the kids are running around all day and they need their food for energy. Luckily, his dad was a member of the staff, so he was able to "convince" his dear son to eat something. Funny that when you threaten to remove dessert from the menu, kids develop a sudden appetite.

I had one kid who didn't like lettuce salad with the dressings that they had, but on other nights, he would load up on caesar salad. When I say load up, I mean two giant plate fulls of it. This happens to be my poor hygiene kid who usually had half the food go in his mouth, and the other half on his clothes.

The youngest child that I was taking care of was interesting as well. He liked hamburger meat, but not taco beef meat. It's practically the same thing! One night we had stirfry night which was amazing, but he didn't like any of it. I had to negotiate with him to at least eat a little bit. Another night we had roast beef, and my kids are crazy. They said they didn't like roast beef! Yet the night after, we had beef dip sandwiches which consists of roast beef, yet they gobbled it up.

There's no reason to this madness.

That's It, Time For A Beard
As mentioned before, most of the other counselors were 14-16 years old. A question that I got asked time and time again is, "Chan, are you coming to teen camp with us?" Whenever I got that question, I raised my eyebrow and asked how old they thought I was. They usually said, 16 or 17 at most. When I told them I was in my mid-twenties, most of them were skeptical at first.

This mysterious phenomenon of grossly underestimating my age is probably due to my asian powers, which involves being able to look young. In more diplomatic terms, I would say that we asians age gracefully. Anyway, in an effort to counter this, I stopped shaving and grew some burly facial hair. I'm sure that adds a few years to my appearance. It also served as a visual reminder of the pain and suffering we were enduring (taking care of 5 kids)

Consequently, the last time time I had facial hair was in my grad year in high school. All of the guys made this pact to not shave until all of our provincial exams were finished. Again, it was an external sign of the tribulations that we were facing.

E Is For Eunuch
During the end of the week, some of the counselors were clearly tired. We sat in a circle and each of us were given an opportunity to air any grievances we might have. One of the counselors proclaimed that he was having second thoughts about ever having kids. I decided to build on that comment.

When it was my turn, I proclaimed that I was seriously considering a career in being a eunuch. Laughter ensued. That is, until two puzzled girls sitting next to me asked, "what's a eunuch?" There was a chalkboard behind me, and I offered to explain it with the chalkboard. Lets just say I was strongly encouraged not to. More laughter ensues. Good times.

Security Comes A Knocking
On the fourth night, my kids were really acting up in the evening chapel service. I was chasing them around the church trying to get them to sit down because they were being really distracting. So, the big guns were called in, and the head counselor sat with my most troublesome kids. Order restored.

After the service, I was getting the kids ready for bed yet again, and I had it down to an art. 9:00pm, and they were all in their beds, quiet. That's when there was a knock at my door, and it was security. They said, "Mr. Chan, we need to talk to you." I thought, uh oh, what did I do wrong.

It was the head counselor, and she looked really somber. She asked if my kids had showered at all for the week. I was surprised by this question because I forced my kids to shower every single night! They should be squeeky clean! She remarked that one of my kids smelled like sour urine. Gah! (shakes fist at poor hygiene kid). I can't believe he still smelled funny after all that! He spent 30 minutes in the shower every night!

The Craziest Miracle I've Ever Seen
A lot of times, when I watch televangelists heal people, I tend to raise a skeptical eyebrow. However, I did see a miracle that was the real deal at camp. This one female counselor was born with a spine that had a defective curve in it. In addition, one of her legs is longer than the other. Both of these combined leads to agonizing pain if she stands for too long.

She asked for prayer because she could hardly stand up. We laid hands on her and prayed, and after a few minutes, all of her pain was gone. She could run around absolutely pain free. She checked her legs, and noticed that one of them was half an inch longer, which almost made both legs equal in length. For the rest of the week, we kept asking her, did she have any of her chronic pain, and she didn't. Behold the power of Christ.

The Battle of 5,000 Water Balloons
On the last days, auxilary staff were busy filling 5,000 water balloons for a massive water fight at the end of the week. It was so much fun. All of the kids and counselors were divided into two teams, and each team had to construct a fort with cardboard and tape. They had one hour to put it together. In the afternoon, both sides had 2,500 water balloons at their fort, and the objective was to run across the field and destroy the opposing for with water balloons.

Doug and I were supposed to leave and head back to Victoria before the water battle begun. But we abandoned the idea. We figure, we spent so much time building the forts, we had to stay for the battle. Fight on!

So, rather than fighting as a pawn in the front lines, I decided to help with the artillery. Both sides had a 3-man slingshot with a range of 200 yards. I was incharge of loading and firing the slingshot, and it was so fun. We were probably firing off a water balloon every 4 seconds or so. We had great percision in our spotting and aiming. We targeted the opposing artillery crew, and we showered them relentlessly. They had to retreat. Once their artillery was neutralized, we started pounding their fort.

This was all good and fun until Doug came running towards us, lobbing water balloons. One of our guys holding the slingshot got hit in the groin and went down. Our artillery was disabled for a few minutes. Nice cheap shot.

The battle lasted for over an hour.

Summary
Overall, it was a great experience helping out at Kid's Camp. There's definitely a lot of things that I rediscovered about kids .... like how they wet the bed. I'm sure I knew that, but I chose to suppress those memories.

People kept asking how we were surviving our week since some of the other counselors were breaking down. I think Doug and I survived because we deal with a lot of kids from a rough neighbourhood back at our home church. So, as long as the kids aren't stealing stuff, and the cops aren't being called up, we can manage.

I talked it over with Doug, and we've concluded that when we have kids, it's better to discipline children early, and it'll save a lot of hassle in the long-run. If you run a tight ship, it'll pay off. Case in point, the counselors who let their kids do whatever they wanted early on, then tried to assert control later lost control. Those who asserted control early and stood by the boundaries had a much easier time through the week.

Anyway, I feel a bit more matured after taking care of kids for a whole week. I also grew spiritually as well. During one of the staff devotionals, one of the leaders had a verse for me: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." - Proverbs 3:5. This is definitely something that I need to focus more on, but it's hard since I like being in control and having things figured out.

In either case, it took a bit of adjusting coming back. I had to bring the maturity level back up. It was strange using big words again as well after being around kids for a whole week. Typing on a keyboard also felt strange after being unplugged for so long.