News from 2007 Summer Camp

It's absurd how fast the summer passes. Honestly, it's a horrible cliche, but it seems like it just started, and now,

it's so quiet.

Today we watched all the campers pack their bags, wave goodbye, and drive off down the long and arduous Chop Point road...

I still have conversations i haven't finished, rides out on the sailboat with campers, stories to tell, and hear, and not to say that this is the end of the world and I'll never see anyone again, but that liberation from the daily grind that the summer brings seems to have expired...

for now

Last night we had a wonderful banquet, followed by the session finale campfire and camp video. Walking to the campfire there was a spectacular wind blowing through the camp, you could feel the change.

This year is going to be spectacular. I feel like this summer has brought so much growth to all of us, recharged us, solidified our foundation to grow even more during the year.

With so much changing, there's this feeling... it's difficult to put into words...


God is so good.


To all the campers, i speak for all of us when i say:

thank you.

It was a truly wonderful summer, and it Chop Point Camp would be nothing without you. We loved sharing the sessions with you, and getting to be a part of your lives for this short time, and we all can't wait too see you again in 2008.

God Bless.

The final few days of Sessions are always spectacular, but usually a huge bummer for me personally. I mean, awesome activities, like shopping in Freeppppppppppppppppppport...


first things first:

a. you shouldn't name a town known for it's designer brands and shopping FREEport. If one were to make the mistake of taking it for it's name sake, one might end up in jail.

where's the justice in that?

b. thank you a whole lot Jonathan for dropping a keyboard on my mac and destroying the ppppppp key which as you may have noticed has taken a toll on my blogging efficiency.

so pplease pardon my spppppelling

movinng on [consciously avoiding words that include the letter ppppp]

Anyway, the last few days of cam.. session are just jam ... full of excitement. So what's the bummer? The bummer is that not only does that mean that cam... session is drawing to an end, but also because of things like video editing and ... there is no way to sppppell ppppphotograpppphy without a pppp...

ppppoint being, some of us tend to miss these activities, BUT, luckily we always manage to go Roller Skating. It's one of my favorite pppparts of campppp, stay upppp late, eat terrible fried food, listen to lousy 90's hippp hopppp and try really really hard not to fall.

This session was a first as well, being the first roller skating extravaganza to be documented by both ppppphoto and video.

stellar.

that's my new favorite adjective...

stellar

Last night was most definitely CTF, which is most definitely an acronym for Capture the Flag. Now, I was actually on my day off, so I did nothing to do with participation nor photographication of the event itself, but I DID hear the air horns on various occasions which signaled either the start or end of each round, and I also had to witness the intercabin rivalry that spawned after it had finished.

and the degree of rivalry told me, well whispered really, that it must have been some fantastic CTF action.

so I pretty much fell asleep to stories of valiant attempts on the flag, and the treachery of cheaters, and the gallantry of those who won.

which leads us to today

Half the camp has been out white water ... wrafting.

the "w" seemed like a good idea at the time...

anyway, we camp-dwellers couldn't let the WWW squad have all the fun, so we boated [or sailed] all the kids out to the sand bar during low tide. There was some ultimate frisbee action, army crawls through the water and mud, and some interesting interactions with algae.

let me close with some possible short hands for white water wrafting which should be more than enough justification for the new spelling:

W3
WWW
Triple-W
Wx3
W³

I may or may not have mentioned this already, but while abroad, I was informed on various occasions that all Americans start stories off with "so..."

Soooo, the other night we dropped the American flag, figuratively mind you, Shawn in all his Boy Scout glory assisted in it's patriotic storage, and up went the Australian flag...

...not sure on the legalities of all that, but for one night Chop Point was an independent Australian territory.

interesting

So, with great Australian pride and exuberance, we threw some bangers on the barbie, grabbed our singlets, stubbies, bordies, swimmers, and thongs, and spent the 'arvo 'stralian style.

The blokes played the footy, and the sheilas yabbered on for a bit before we really got in "down undah" spirit with some croc-bashin' and eatin some 'stralian brekky cuisine with some Vegemite


for those of you still scratching your heads like me, although for completely unrelated reasons

i have an itchy scalp at the moment.

here's some help translating.

and don't worry, the ole red white and blue is back up and flowing in the wind now... although, seriously, the Australian flag is red white and blue too, despite the national colours being green and gold, blame it on the Brits and their convicts.

-sigh-


by the way, pictures are up here.

Question: Where in the world could you go to be serenaded by a feux-austrian orchestra paying tribute to Julie Andrews, visit a mental ward and witness an escape attempt, drop by a wedding chapel, go on site of the wizard of oz, a women's penitentiary, a wax museum, and a rave, all without a passport?

Answer: Chop Point

Question: Oh dear me, i didn't know Chop Point was home to such wretched things, what on earth is going on over there?

Answer: in two parts:

a. Chop Point isn't in fact home to such things, though one might say that with the zombie activities, pierre the lumberjack, and the wilkinson kids, we're home to much worse than that.

b. the answer is Cabin Theme Night

Question: What on earth is that?

Answer: Cabin theme night is the time of year when every cabin is responsible for "theme-ing" their cabin, an activity that requires much creativity, brute strength, and absurdly good looks. After all cabins have been "themed" the whole camp tours the cabins and partakes in the said madness.

Question:

Answer: I'm sorry, but there will be no further questions at this time.