Our regular activities kept us busy most of today with plenty of crafts (ceramics!), sports (swimming!), horses (jumping!), and adventure (climbing!), but we also enjoyed two very special events. The first was a clinic of pocketdisc games and techniques. Our friend Patrick Groft, the inventor of the pocketdisc, came over from Hillsborough for the morning to host the sessions. You may have seen these cool discs at an outdoor store, but they are multicolored, croqueted cotton discs with a curled edge making them surprisingly aerodynamic and fun to throw like a Frisbee. They fly great and are super easy to catch, and because they’re soft, can safely be thrown both indoors and out. They are handmade in Guatemala and are a Fair Trade product, too. We liked them so much, we have teamed up with Patrick to have special Rockbrook editions of the pocketdisc made for our campers, but this morning it was about learning to throw the discs and playing some fun games that involve throwing and catching them. We played a couple of classic ball games with the pocketdiscs: dodgeball and spud, for example, but also some new ones like “Duck Hunting” and “Monkey in the Middle.” These are really fun toys, and we all had a blast running around, throwing the discs, catching them, and playing the games.
After dinner we had our second special event of the day, a dance with Camp Carolina in our gym. Local DJ Marcus (“DJ Dawg”) came over to handle the music and dance lighting for us. Marcus is always up on the latest pop music, but is also great at getting everyone dancing. For example, several times in his playlist, he pulled out “group dance” songs that included dancing instructions in the lyrics. “To the left, to the left… now kick, now kick,” etc. All of the CCB boys and their counselors came to us for this dance, so we had to be ready with extra of our homemade cookies and plenty of water to keep the sweaty dancers going. We had perhaps 300 people in the gym altogether! Most of the dancing was pretty silly, as was what most people were wearing, with our counselors leading the way. The idea we stress to the staff is to de-emphasize the “boy-girl” character of the event and to key on enjoying the music and the dancing. That’s partly why so many crazy costumes are part of the scene; it proves that what you look like isn’t important to have a good time. Even so, I have to admit, the oldest teenage girls spend a lot of time “getting ready” (hair!) and feeling a little nervous when the boys first arrive. As the girls tend to rove in a pack during the evening, it’s hard not to think of the old adage “safety in numbers.” Two hours of dancing and two hours of everyone having a good time, it just flew on by.
Here’s one last bonus picture. This is our vegetable garden down at the landsports field. Pam planted it a few weeks back and has been taking good care of i. It’s really taking off! She’s got heirloom tomato plants that are bushing out to 5 feet tall! There are beans, cucumbers, herbs and squash. Rick even used some of the squash tonight in the vegetarian stir fry he served. Once a week or so, as part of the twilight time, we’ll invite the campers to come down at check out the garden. Pam explains about the plants and encourages the girls to feel, smell and even taste some of them. It’s fun for them to see such a well tended garden and to have all their questions answered.
