More Magic

I loved having my best friend X at camp, but it was hard to keep up blogging all of the great stories from the week because every free minute I had, I wanted to spend having fun with her. That being said, she pointed out that "I'm here and your mom knows I'm here, so your 'readers' understand why the blog isn't updated." [Shout out to my readers- Mom, X and, well... um... anyone else out there!].

Here are two stories from the week that I have to go back to.

1. Sorting Hat-

In Harry Potter, kids are put into their houses by a talking sorting hat. The sorting hat in the story sings a poem and then calls out the name of the kid and which house he or she belongs. For our week at camp, we knew we wanted to put kids into cabins with a sorting hat. Our plan had been to put a walkie talkie inside the hat and then have someone far away call them out. We were a little nervous that the walkie talkie wouldn't be loud enough if it was inside a hat, but we tried it out and it seemed ok. PDS and I both also carry walkie talkies on our belts, which we knew would amplify the sound, but we were still a little nervous about how the whole thing would work out.

As luck would have it, X was visiting and so we didn't have to have any of the staff skip the welcome/introductions. She hid behind some cars a little ways away from the field (where all of us were). I carried the sorting hat stool and PDS triumphantly carried the sorting hat, carefully balancing the walkie talkie inside. She sat it down and I said to it, "sorting hat, can you tell us where the kids go?"

Unbeknownst to me, X had done a little research on the sorting hat and found out about the poem that comes before the actual sorting (a detail I'd forgotten since reading the books). She wrote a camp version of the poem and began our ceremony. Apparently it wasn't obvious that the voice was coming from a walkie talkie, because kids mouths were wide open and I saw several staff actually say, "how is it doing that?" There is NOTHING better than when we do something cool enough to actually surprise or impress the staff.

After the poem, she read off the first cabin list. I asked, "which cabin is next?" and I turned to really talk to the hat, acting as impressed by the magic as the kids actually were. I didn't know that she couldn't hear me from where she was sitting, but luckily she could see me and so each time I turned, she started the next list and the whole ceremony was perfect.

2. Power Outage-

Nothing surprises me at camp anymore. Enough weird and unexpected things have happened that I just expect unpredictable things to occur and when they do, I'm usually pretty calm, knowing that it's just one more story to add to a long list of camp stories from my life.

So towards the end of shower time on Monday night as the last few kids were getting in the shower, and the power went out, I didn't even flinch. The bathrooms are in the basement of a building, so there are no windows and thus, it was COMPLETELY dark. Of course the girls immediately started screaming. I am the bathroom monitor so I was right there to tell them to remain calm and continue showering as best they could while I went to get flashlights. X and I stood in between the showers, holding flashlights while the girls finished. You can take normal showers at home, but you can only take showers by flashlight at camp!

The weather wasn't actually that bad, but the power was out until about 4am. It was probably the best time to lose power at camp since most of the groups were already in their cabins getting ready to go to sleep. It was weird going to bed knowing that we didn't have electricity anywhere at camp, but there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I checked the weather one last time and then went to sleep. Never a dull moment at camp...