Take a sad song and make it better

So I guess I need to face it. Summer is over and I need to do my final posting and end this blog.  First of all I want to apologize that I stopped writing at the end of the camp, but I just did not have any time! Camp Needlepoint went from Sunday to Saturday and we did not really have any free time during the week either.  Also it was very tiring, but I’ll tell about that later..

So the last week of regular Croix was awesome.  That weekend we had some kids at camp cause they couldn’t go on trail (water was too high and fast at Croix river), so we created some activities and had a Harry Potter dinner. We had the long house tables where people were awkwardly sitting far away from each other. We also had the sorting hat, and Belly on walkie-talkie telling which house everyone belongs to, it was something ridiculously amazing! 

Me and Criss-Cross were absolutely crazy that week, I can’t say if our kids loved us or hated us for that, but we had so much fun! haha. I think my schedule for that week was pretty much the best I’ve had all summer. We had all good activities and a day trail. For camper choice we were facilitating SLIP’N’SLIDE <3 It was amazing, particularly in batman clothing. Our day trail with Eddie and Ray was perfect. We were playing at the water fall and after that walked to the beach. The kids absolutely loved it: “Are we there yet?” “How much further?” “I caaaaaaan’t walk anymore!” “I’m hungry” “I’m thirsty” “I’m tired” “I hate trail” “I have never walked this much”. We had fun :D After that we visited a nature center and did a tree trail! That tree trail was awesome, if you ask me. We learned about the nature and saw 7 deer just standing there really close! We also had to wait for our ride for 2 hours and me and Eddie missed our time-off because of that.

On that Friday, our last day of Croix, we did some crazy stuff together. We created a super bed with the people who were staying for needlepoint (which was pretty much the internationals and few amazing nationals).  We had 12 mattresses covering one room’s floor. We thought that it was  gonna be a party at super bed every day during needlepoint…little did we know. So landmines that night wasn’t the best idea for the next day’s training that we were facilitating for the diabetic staff. We did something stupid and on Sunday night we got to pay for it, the saddest and scariest night L Don’t wanna go to the details, but two of my great friends had to go home because of all of us, and because quite stupid reasoning too! Anyway the training on Saturday was awful, I’ve never felt so sick. But somehow we did it, never back down! That night we had our end of the summer banquet with all the Croix staff. There were tables down at the beach and it was beautiful. Have to say, some tears might have fallen that night. Mostly it went in cheerful atmosphere. We took lots of pictures, we ate good food, gave out recognitions, gave speeches, had the longest boogaloo and baptized people at the river! ;) “Oh come on let’s go down, down to the river to pray….” Then it was time to head up to Mufasa’s cabin for LSP. That night was so good until the dirty boogaloo, which was the most ridiculous and best we’ve had so far. (Went on for 30 minutes, learned later on that summer, since someone filmed it…..8D) After that idk what happened to my spirit, but it wasn’t as fun anymore. I guess I realized I didn’t want everything to be over and say goodbye to those people! 

Sunday came and so started Camp Needlepoint and my time as an arts and crafts director. I was P-staff!!!  Camp Needlepoint is a huge user group, but they have their own staff so they only needed few Croix people for program areas and for life guarding. It was so weird all of the sudden having so many new people, they all knew each other already, so we had the feeling of not knowing anyone while walking around the property. I didn’t particularly like it :s Also some of their staff weren’t good counselors at all, and all the trash that they left! Being diabetic doesn’t mean you can do anything!! Enough of that, there were also good people :)

Our boss had changed and it was a good thing since Gonzo was way better getting stuff done and listening to us. We had a lot of different responsibilities those 2 weeks. As I said I was A&C director, but I also had to do parking duty, cleaning up, parent letter, life guard etc. I also had to go on 3 day canoeing trail that week. It was fun, but also hard and not the thing I really would have wanted to do. During the nights we were first told we are off, but after not behaving well enough that one Friday night they didn’t trust us to have any freetime, so we were stuck at camp to do stupid stuff.  We also had to break down super bed cause it was a fire hazard and sleep in single sex rooms. Haha. LOL. (One night me and Mufasa fell asleep to the same room while watching a movie or something and Gonzo actually kept coming to the room every 30 minutes to check what we are doing…I heard in the morning, obviously I was sleeping). Those weeks were fun, but also we were all tired and kinda were already ready to be over..not whit the people though, just with the work. The last week there was so much work, cleaning up the whole camp and preparing it for fall and winter!  Also on Friday the CNP director just decided whitout asking me or CC that everyone who wanted could do tye-dying..WHAT?! So we had 70 EXTRA kids at A&C doing TYE-DYING! It was a total mess. For all those extra activities only the Croix staff was helping, it was hard and our motivation wasn’t that high anymore. Everything got done though. Except that mouse is probably still at the Savannah (the building we were sleeping the last 2 weeks..ewww).

The very last day of camp was my birthday. It was surreal, cause I had to say goodbye to so many people. I was crying a lot. But also we partied and before that visited Mall of America the final time! Pretty epic 22^nd birthday, not the most memorable, but the most epic! B-day fireworks and everything <3 

Early in the Monday morning (August 29^th) it was time to say goodbye to dear old Camp St. Croix that had been my home for the past 3 months! Weird…BUT HELLO MIAMI!

Me, Criss-Cross and Cuda had an amazing time in Miami, even though we got the last bits of the hurricane the first day.. We rested, laid at the beach, and went on some tours. I got to hold an alligator!

I also did a quick weekend trip to “home”, Charlotte NC. I saw friends and went to see my hoods. It still felt like home. It was a perfect weekend :)

On Tuesday the 6^th of September it was time for NEW YORK CITY! I was so excited! I got to see some camp people again and pretend it was not over yet and stuff..So I met CC and Cuda at the airport, I took Cuda with me and we went to find our hostel. It was in china town and it was hilarious, our room was smaller than a closet. But why would we be in our room, we were in NYC!! We met Mufasa and ATL and they were showing us the city a little bit. The next morning we had to face the fact that we didn’t have a place to stay anymore. (all the hostels were booked, maybe cause 9/11?) We had a hostel haunt, but we didn’t find anything. I was quite stressed, but we didn’t slide into despair. We took our bags and walked to ATL’s and then just walked into some hostels and finally found a place. They had single sex dorm rooms, so me and Cuda had different rooms, oh well, can’t win always. We went to the National History Museum, and only paid $5 for 3 adults (suggested amount $57). That place was so interesting that we didn’t wanna leave at the closing time. After that we went to the Central Park and rescued Prawn from Time Square <3 It rained the whole night and we walked for bajillion miles (the Manhattan Island is HUGE) and because we wanted to have a break before taking our huge bags from ATL’s to the hostel we decided to have few drinks at ATL’s. Well we ended up all sleeping at his tiny apartment. Me, Mufasa, Prawn and Cuda slept in a small futon spooning. So uncomfortable, but oh so nice! I feel young and alive!  The next day we went to ground zero, Battery Park, Wall Street, Brooklyn Bridge, City Hall and Rockefeller Center. We also saw CC and her sister J On Friday we went to a boat tour to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island! At 5ish Prawn and Cuda had their own stuff they wanted to do so they just left me alone. I went to ATL’s to hang out with him and Mufasa. It was my last night in NY and in the US, so we wanted to go out. The guys also forced me to drink my first 40 ever, oh lord…:D An Irish couple and Prawn came with us also and we went to one club. That night was awesome, but then it was Mufasa’s time to say goodbye to Prawn and that was awful. I had to run after him and we walked together to ATL’s both in tears. L That night was bitter sweet. We were just lying in silence for a long time, but then started talking and talking and talking. It was an amazing night, one of the best! We didn’t sleep at all. 

I don’t even want to write about the next morning. The hardest thing I’ve ever done, I had to walk away from there even though everything was saying I should not. I cried the whole walk to a café where I met CC and had to say goodbye to her too. I had been scared of those two moments for so long…I don’t even know how I managed to get to my hostel in that state of mind and pack my bags. The whole day went by so fast, my mind was just a haze. Said goodbye to Prawn and Cuda too and then took the subway to the airport at night. I didn’t even check if I stepped into a right train, I was lucky and I get to the airport on time. 

I kinda didn’t even realize that I was leaving, until I heard two people speaking Finnish at the bathroom. That moment I almost past out, I couldn’t breathe and I started panicking and almost crying. I hadn’t heard Finnish at all on live during the whole summer and that moment it all just hit me, I was actually leaving. I had said my final good byes, maybe goodbye forever to those people I had spent the whole summer with. And I mean the whole summer 24/7. They all had become so close to me, they were my towers of strength this summer. I can’t even write about this now, but that was the end of my summer adventures. I don’t wanna be misunderstood it was also nice to come back to Finland and see my friends at Mikkeli bus station <3  

Hold me like you'll never let me go

Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane

Don't know when I'll be back again

Oh babe I hate to go 

This summer was an incredible experience and I grew so much! I also changed a lot and I just wanna thank some people for helping me out and helping me realize something about life <3 Never forget!

Sorry for the long final report, if anyone actually read the whole thing :D Thanks for following or just sneak peeking the best summer of my life! :)

Goodbye, there's no sadder word to say
And it's sad to walk away with just the memories

Living on the edge!

The most epic few weeks. So when you go sailing, make sure that first of all you know what you're doing and second of all that the wind is not a bitch. Also would be helpful if you didn't go rescuing sailing boat with a sailing boat. That way you don't have to be rescued by a house boat and being out at the river for 7 hours. Hahaha, so that was fun. Driving a colfcar around camp property without permission, living on the edge, that's what I do nowadays!
I've got a tb group last week, which is an okay group. They are 10-12 years old and they go on an overnight trail. But my co-counselor was pretty much the only person I don't really like here. We got along during the week, but she pissed me off so much by not doing ANYTHING on trail. So I ended up first of all carrying all our equipment and second of all making a fire (one-match and no match BTW) AND at the same time preparing the dinner for us. Gotta love that. Other than that I enjoyed my week. On Friday I just heard that I'm not working needlepoint (last two weeks of camp, a camp for diabetic people), or getting paid. So my weekend was lovely. Now all things are sorted out and I WILL BE P-STAFF for needlepont WITH CRISS-CROSS <3 Yay arts and crafts directors!
This week me and CC are cos and we have homesteaders. Some of our girls are ridiculous, such divas, but other than that they are nice. We did an awesome daytrail yesterday to the waterfalls and also got to do a treetrail and saw 7 deer!! Pretty sweet. Last few days of counseling....so sad!!! :( Where did this summer go????????? I'm not ready to go home yet!

Epic trail

This week was one of the best one's I've had here! Like I mentioned before I got River Riders. My girls were 11-14 yrs old and we went on 3 day canoeing trail. We were supposed to leave on Tuesday morning and come back on Thursday. Well because of my eye infection, I first of all had to clean up my whole cabin with cleenex etc, we couldn't leave until Wednesday morning. It was all good though cause that way we had actually time to pack our stuff.

Trail was epic! We had 10 girls though which is a lot for trail. And having that many campers we couldn't have the same schedule with the guys, even though it usually is. And two of my best friends were doing it!!!! Oh well. All of the girls were really great except for one, who was a total idiot to be honest. She would keep talking back and thinking she could do anything. Paddling was amazing! The weather was perfect, our schedule was quite chilled. The only thing is that we asked for three water containers, but only got two. And one of them leaked, so we had 2 gallons of water for 12 people for a whole day. So obviously we ran out of water. We had to cook all our meals to that river water. We also got freaked that we actually have to drink that the next day. Cause the map was outdated and there was no water at the camp site we're camping even though it said it had it, and the next one was in 9 miles. There was no way my girls could do that without water. Luckily in the morning we found people's cabins and got water from them.
We also made two one match fires and one NO MATCH FIRE!!! I'm so proud of that. The dinner fire had been gone for few hours, but we just kept blowing in it and got the fire going eventually! yay. All the people from my group received a poopbracelet from pooping in the nature (dig a hole and poop in it, cover up). So proud of them!
Only bad thing was the mosquitos!! I got eaten alive, even after Predator pray. Oh well I have no skin left that's not just full of red spots. But it was totally worth it! And even though I got an epic burn that blistered up and looks green now, I loved the trail! :D
Next week TB's, so over night trail and now sailing!!! woopwoop!

Who's it gonna be?

Finally time for this blog! Too much has happened in a week. For last week I got a dreamteam group. Me+ Pounce with 10 homsteader girls (they are 12-14yrs old) and we had Cuda's boys also! AMAZING!
One of the best weeks I've had. Just one girl was really homesick and cried the first 3 days straight, no kidding. But I convinced her to stay until our daytrail on Wednesday and after that she didn't even wanna go home anymore. I was so proud of myself :D And I won counselor of the week because of that! Yay.
I absolutely loved our group and we had an awesome time. Our daytrail to Willow River water falls was epic. It was really amazing until we almost killed one of the girls :S She got caught in the current when we were above the water fall. She was a foot away from falling down and maybe dying! Luckily Pounce got her. Scariest 5 minutes of my life!
The past week was the hottest in my life. The heat index was 115F every single day, cause the humidity was so bad. There's no A/C in any of the buildings. We got a fan to our cabin, but no one could still sleep. I swear that I didn't sleep at all that week! Luckily during the days we had springlers out and we had the most epic water wars! The whole camp ended up joining.
This week I got River Riders, which means that I'm going on 3 day canoeing trail! I'm super excited. Excpet that I have a pink eye right now and need to og to the doctors. So I'm not sure if they let me go...:(

These past few weeks we have had awful thunderstorms, one night the alarm went off. One night a ligtning srtoke thru the building, it was the scariest thing EVER!
Also bookclub both of these past weekends have been awesome! I'm enjoying my stay here so much!
Excpet for the fact that camp food makes me sick. It has no nutrions in it and it's all from box pretty much. So no fresh food, yack! But that's a minor thing. And this week I'll get trailfood, yummy!

Already two of the internationals have gonoe home. G got fired and K-pop just had to go for other reasons. So who's it gonna be this week, hopefully not me!?

All is fine in CSC again! I had the past Sunday off because I didn't have overnight campers. So me and Cuda decided that it is a good idea to walk downtown Hudson in 95F+ humid weather! Well it wasn't the greatest after all...It took us 4 hours to get there and back and we were sprinting our way back to make it to dinner. Oh wow, never again.
On Monday I started at the Day Croix, which is on the same property but just like half a mile away. The kids come only for the day and spent the nights back at home. I got  a pretty well behaved group, but it wasstill exhausting becuase I didn't know any of the daily routines. I figured them out though and don't have a co-counselor anymore. We do lot of the same activities as overnight but also lot is different. Day Croix is also way more relaxed, the couselors don't have to do as much since the kids have lot of freetime to just play aroud, becuase the kids are kind of in a daycare and not at camp. The counselors don't  really know any skits or not that many songs, so I'm like a star there now! :D I also get to have a walkie-talkie, I feel so important!
I walk back to the res camp at dinner time and after that I've been covering for solo counselors, so that they get some breaks. It's nice, cause that way I get to know some of the campers that are around. I also had the best devos with one cabin group the other night. They were telling me how much the camp has changed their lives, made me so happy cause that is excatly why the camp is running! It was pretty tireing to not have any breaks for few days though. On Wednesday I finally got a night off, which was sweet!
I really liked Day Croix, but res camp is way better! I hope that next week I get an awesome group, maybe a trail. There are some amazing trails this week, a horse trail and climbing trail which are 5 days!! So jealous for those people!!!!

I feel like the most ridiculous car incidents keep happening to me here. Two weeks ago I went to a store with few of my frineds and when we got out the driver coudln't find her keys. SO we went back inside and traced our footsteps. We walk through the whole store and asked all the workers to if someone had found them. No. Well then we decided to see if they are inside the car. The car alarm went off when we opened the door. The keys were not inside there and now we looked like some criminals on top of that. We were almost freaking out cause we had like half an hour to make it back to the camp. At the end we found the keys from teh store and made it back to the camp safely.
Then this week we had our night off and we went to the town. We decided to take Mufasa's car which is the most amazing piece of s*it ever. It cost him 300$ and it sounds like it's breaking down. None of the windows roll up or down, some of thedoors are not working etc (I should take a picture of that, no one can understand unless tehy see it). So first one of the windows fell in all the way, then we were trying to fix it (while the car was still moving) and some other parts just fell off. At that point I was about to pee in my pants, it was hilarious. On our way back to the camp the battery died while we were driving, so me, Crisscross and Belly jumped out of the moving car and started pushing it. Epic. No one at the gas station where we pushed it had jump capels, so we just had to leave the car there and get a ride back to the camp to watch our kids! I hope the car is ok, cause it's my favorite car ever! Plus I wanna do something this weekend!

Floor is lava!

Let me see how you paint the Savannah! Let me see how you spread some woodchips with retarded hand! Wait did I sign up for support staff or camp counselor? I'm honestly not even sure now. I got lifeguarding for next week, since I'm not supposed to do anything physical. Wait did I just do some manual labor/ slave work after having a diarrhea and not eating anything in like 3 days..
At this moment I hate being an international at this country, everything is so messed up! For instance we haven't got paid yet at all, and no one knows when that wonder happens. I have given myself two more hours two whine about everything and then I'm just gonna suck it up and be happy again :D
Now it's time to sneak into the kitchen and get some food and take a nap. Why do americans get up at 7am after a party??? And why do they also steal peoples shoes??

Sick chic

How did this end up this way? I had the best two days ever following the worst couple of days ever!
Last week I was off the end of the week, it was super nice. I was just laying down at the beach and working on my cast tanline, because it's off now! I sunburned my back after falling asleep at the dock for an hour. The very next day I was lifeguarding, which I liked a lot! I didn't save anyones life though...
At the end of the week I got sore throat and started coughing and on Friday when it was ridiculously hot and humid I started sounding like an asthma attack victim. I almost fainted so I had to spend the afternoon at the nurse's office, I had a heat exhaustion, people drink water!!!! Little did I know how well I would get to know that office this week....
Weekend was just amazing. First we had our weekly staffparty in a house with a hottube etc. The next day we were wondering around Wisconsin with one of my friends and ended up sleeping in his comfortable aircondisioned house (well basically we told him that we were gonna stay there, so he didn't have a choice). Moving on to an epic Sunday. We overslept like an hour and got to the camp at 10. But me and Crisscross (an international from England) HAD to do laundry, so one girl dropped us at a place called Launromat, where we  do our laundry. (Camp has one washing machine, but we are NOT allowed to use it...ridiculous) We ended up being stuck there and had to call a P-staff member to pick us up, they were not very happy with that. Ooops.
The camp for this week was for innercity kids who are potential high school dropouts and they would get their gym credit by coming to the camp. We knew we were gonna have a crazy exhausting week ahead of us, but I was really bumped, especially when I was supposed to be cos with one of my best friends here. There were supposed to be 300 kids. At 1pm on Sunday 107 of them showed up. I was told that I would have 15 kids with my co...well NONE of them came. I was so upset. I was looking forward to that experience and challenge and then they were telling me that I will not have any campers. We figured that the problem was 4th opf July, so we were calling all of the kids who didn't show up and offered the choice of coming on Tuesday. Until Tueasday the rest of the staff just had to hang in there, shadow some groups and do service projects. We were so pissed. We had to cut some trees and paint buildings etc. Just ridiculous.
We were expecting 60 more kids to come on Tuesday, but only 15 came. So that was 1 more girls cabin and 1 more boys cabin. I would have gotten a group, IF I wasn't so sick. I had a cough AND I also somehow got a diarrhea on top of that. Lovely. I have just spent the most miserable two days of my life at the nurse's office. The first day I was just complitely off, I don't remember ANYTHING, except for that the nurse had a red circle in her shirt that I kept staring whenever she came to me. I spent two days straight sleeping (the time that I was not at the bathroom) and not eating anything. Now I'm just hoping this week to end and can't wait for next week!

ps. A game called messages to Garcia is the funnest game ever ;)

CSC is totally awesome!

Long time no see! First week of work is now over. Actually to be honest the second one is over for me too! So the first one I was cos with Bza who I went to trail with, so I was pleased with that. We had 10 15-years old woodcrafters at cabin 11, which is the nicest cabin out of all (lucky us). They told us Sunday morning (which is always the first day of camp) that it's gonna be Camp OZ, which means all of them had epilepsy. I was pretty nervous, but luckily Bza had been a counselor here before so she knew what we were supposed to do and helped me a lot.
Every week is almost the same for everyone. At first we get our co-counselors and cabin assignments (I hate packing my stuff twice a week!!) + schedules for the week. Then the campers arrive, we have a whole camp opening seremony, do rotations about safety, play all camp game and have the opening campfire. at the campfire we do skits and songs and play games, I absolutely just love them! Then during the actual week we have 2-4 activities per day; some of the examples would be swimming, riding horses, archery, arts and crafts, sailing, teambuilding, rock climbing, high ropes, different sports, nature etc. I'm so thankful that I get to be here, cause I really love everything we do and I get paid for it!! At the evenings we either have all camp games (like capture the flag or predators pray) or unit activity, where all the same agegroup campers do something together. Every evening we have devotions before bed, and that's a time when we go over the day and get to know eachother better. On thursday night we do a closing campfire and then Friday it is goodbyes and staffparty!
So the first week was crazy. My campers were having seizures everyday, and one day one of them had 6! I was so stressed out, and couldn't sleep at all, cause they kept waking me up to go to the bathroom or cause they had a seizure. I absolutely just loved all of the girls, but it was hard work! I'm really proud of myself that I actually survived the whole week! I feel like I will learn so much during this summer about leadership, the activities and myself.
I was ridiculously tired at the end of the week so I ended up not going to the party. On Saturday we volunteered at Croixathlon, which is a thrialthlon that raises money for the YMCA camp. It was really fun actually, and after that we ended up going to the mall of america and to river fall movies! It was tota;;y awesome, that mall is the biggest thing ever. No kidding. Also during the night we saw something umbelievable pretty, a firefly show over one field at the camp. We kept staring at it for like 15 minutes.
This week I ended up being cos with Ringo who's originally from Sweden (yay team Slingo) it was super nice! We had 7 summer samps, so they were tiny little kids and they stayed only for two nights, so now I'm off for the rest of the week! I was at the beach for 3 hours today, it beautiful outside! <3 Tomorrow maybe to the cities :) More later.
Love, Sling.

ps. I also had  a doctor haunt last week, after two days finally found one who would accept my insurance. They found a mark of a broken bone (thanks doctors at finland), but it's almost healed! I get my cast off at the end of this week! woppwoop, I'm super excited!

I wanna wake up in the morning at the dear old camp St.Croix

Staff training is over!! We are ready for some action. Campers arrive tomorrow, pretty exciting. I'm a bit nervous, since we don't know anything yet, like co-counsellors or what agegroup we are getting.
One highlight of the training was that stafftrail. I went canooing, but wasn't actually able to paddle at all, so I was the dougher (spelling?) the whole 3 days. Boring may I say. There was 8 members in my team and we ended up doing 35 miles. The weather was absolutely beautiful, but the downside is that I got really sunburned. The river was amazing, we saw lots of wildlife: turtles (WHAT?), deer, eagles and other cool birds. The second day my group decided to wake up early in the morning, so we could pass all the other groups. One of the best decisions ever. It was amazingly pretty and calm.
Our groupleader made us do about bajillion inis and devos. But I don't complain, I learned pretty good games to use in the future! Also we all had to make a one match fire. Mad skills ;) The last night we all 8 fell asleep in one tent while doing devos of the day. So we ended up sleeping there. A bit crowded feeling since those tents are made for 4 kids, not 8 adults (we also happened to have three biggest guys from the whole camp). But that experience really made us more close and even though at moments it was a bit uncomfortable, that was the best part of the whole trip! I think I had the best shower ever after trail, I was so dirty...
On Thursday night we were done with the staff training so we felt like doing something. We ended up going to the twincities and visiting some peoples family and got some icecream. The actual party was on Friday. After spending our first day off at the social security office at Minneapolis we headed out to one counsellors cabin. The party was......a bit crazy. Not going into the details :D We got back today (Saturday) lunchtime and since then I have just been sleeping.
So, campers tomorrow and maybe visiting doctors to see what we could do to my hand. Wish me luck for my first session! :)
Love, Sling! (that is my camp name)

What's that you say?

Busybusy. Staff training has started and the days are really full! It feels like I have already been here forever, camp days seem to last 3 days, but I absolutely love it. I'm just really exhausted all the time since we always want to do stuff after training, so we usually go to bed at midnightish and get up at 7 am.
So the cabins. It was nothing like I was expecting. I walked into one when I arrived here and boom! It was  a crappy and creepy one. There are 12 beds, bugnests, but HUGE bugs everywhere, racoons partying at nigh outside, and small shelves where to put your staff. It's super crowded now when all the national staff have arrived. A BIG minus, NO AC. We are burning up! Other minus, you can't adjust the temperature in the showers. Which means lobstershowers everyday!! :s

The food here at camp is phenomenal, but not very healthy. We usually have eggs, sausages, pancakes, muffins etc. for breakfast and somekind of a sandwhich for lunch and then dinner usually varies. But I think I have only eaten two (2) proper meals here :D I'm gonna be so fatty at the end of this summer!

In staff training we have gone over our policies and how to act in different situations etc. But also we have had the opportunity to try out different activities (including canoeing, rock climbing, horses, archery, high ropes) and learn about the safety issues. One day we built a dock at the waterfront, we have also done some teambuilding, and tomorrow we are heading out to staff trail. Mine is a canoe trail, but I can't really paddle at all, since my hand hasn't still healed, which sucks! I have a pretty good feeling about this summer, I'm really  going to learn so much, and if I put myself out there I can get so much out of this!

Everyone in here is extremely nice and outgoing, so I have already made some pretty good friends! We are actually planning a group trip at the end of the summer with the internationals, sweet! It's a close community and we like to spend the nights also together. So far we have done few camp fires, which I absolutely love, gone out to restaurants or just shopping, bars, and yesterday we went to drive-in movies! It was awesome, since I've never seen one before. I liked it, it cost 8$ and we got to watch two movies. The program group is planning some weekend trips for us internationals, which I find really nice, since that's just some extrawork they are putting in, just for us. I'm really, really loving this place <3

That's all for today, I really have to go packing for the trail! I try to get more organized post someday, I'm thinking the end of the week when we actually get some days off. Also I will try to upload some pictures here! Happy trails :)

It's a great day to be a lifeguard!

So apparently I never have time to write to this  blog, but now I'll try my best. Starting from the beginning, Friday morning bright and early I was surprised at Helsinki airport by some fellow classmates, pretty sweet! They came to say good bye to me at 5.30am and they had made me a survival book that has a diary part at the end. The flights were long and boring, and I was soooo dead while I got to the Minneapolis airport. I found out that no one is there picking me up, not cool. But then I called some of the camp staff members and all was fine! When I arrived to the camp, we found out that all the other staff members who had arrived (mostly internationals) had gone out to Hudson, so I had the cabin all for myself. I passed out like the second I hit the bed.
Saturday we were free to do anything, so me and couple other internationals were wondering around the camp area (it's huge btw) and went swimming to the beautiful river. It's like really hot in here all the time, so usually when we have freetime we just go down to the beach. It's just the hardest path ever, it's only about 300meters, BUT it's all very STEEP downhill. At the night most of the people were going out again, so I joined them. We ended up going to two bars at Hudson. It was nice, me + 14 guys.
On Sunday we started lifeguarding training. First we had to do some swimmig tests to be able to continue, like 500 meters w/o stopping, saving a brick and diving for 20 meters. It was pretty exhausting and after that we learnt lots of different saving techinques. We swam over 4 hours straight just to figure out that back at the camp they forgot to pack us lunch. So all we got was crackers and strawberries. Lifeguarding continued for 2 more days, with classroom sessions, test, first aid, CPR and more swimming, but NOW I am a lifeguard!!!! I can save some lives.
It's totally different to be at the camp now, cause there are now kids. So basically the few staff memebers who are here are just fooling around, and we are able to go shopping to places like TARGET <3 etc.
Tonight more national staff members will arrive and tomorrow starts staff training.
But now I want to go burning my pale/pink skin some more to that 100F/35C weather!

I'm alive!

Hello USA! After traveling for 30 hours I finally got to the lovely Camp St.Croix. I have already met a lot of people, most of them are the other international staff members, and I can say I'll have a pretty good summer :)) It's really hot outside, so I don't feel like writing atm. And today is the last chance to fool around, cause tomorrow we start our lifeguarding lessons! I'll describe everything later on!

Taalla ollaan. 30 tunnin tuskallisen matkustamisen jalkeen paasin perille leirille. Olen jo tavannut joitain ihmisia, useimmat on toisia ulkkareita ja voin sanoa jo nyt, etta timanttinen kesa tulossa! :) Ulkona on kuuma, joten en halua tuhlata aikaani sisalla. Varsinkin, kun huomenna alkaa jo tositoimet, nyt pitaa siis nauttia lomapaivasta! Kirjoitan paremman matkaraportin myohemmin!

Äiti älä pelkää, kyllä pidän itsestä huolen!

 For my mom who's a bit worried:

Haloo Helsinki- Maailman toisella puolen


I'll take care of myself! 

2.40am leaving home
3.10am bus leaves from Tampere
5.40am bus arrives in Helsinki
8.00am 1st flight takes off 
9.10am I'll arrive in London
11.45am 2nd flight
2.15pm I'm in Chicago USA <3
8.30pm 3rd flight
9.50pm I'm finally in my destination (Minneapolis)...well almost.
~11:ish pm I'll be in Hudson, Wisconsin
(these all are local times, so it will be like 7am Finland time when I finally get to the camp!! It means over 28 hours of traveling for me, gotta love it <3)


PEACE OUT FINLAND!

Don't wanna think about tomorrow

LAST. WEEK.
Packing. Checking  the paperwork. Panicking. Doing everyhing but relaxing, holidaying and focusing. "Focus Vilma, Focus!" I'm guessing he is right while saying that to me (he being my dad). Bajillion things to do, but I feel like not doing anything..And tomorrow Le Tour De Eastern Finland. They call me overachiever. But hey I'll just put my power shirt (spiderrrrrrr mannnn) on and I'm invincible. HA!
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING collaborates with me at the moment. This weekend I had to go to Mikkeli to get a medical report of my arm from the doctor who checked it, before I could get an examination here in Tampere dealing with the camp. Appreciated. Now my printer isn't working and I should print few _very_ important things. But IN YOUR FACE LIFE, I will not surrender. I just stroke a bunny or Snoop Dog and smile. And enjoy the rain with my Hai-shoes and new umbrella!

VIIMEINEN VIIKKO.
Pakkailua, kriiseilyä, asioiden hoitamista ja tarkistamista, panikointia. Ei yhtään lomailua ja lepoa. Tai keskittymistä, isä on kai oikeassa. Pitäisi joskus keskittyä. Mutta en osaa elää niin. 
Miljardi juttua tekemättä, laiskottaisi, kolme päivää lähtöön ja siinä välissä maakuntamatkailua iloiseen Itä-Suomeen. Sitä tosin tuli jo tehtyä viikonloppuna, kun kävin hakemassa epikriisin ensiavusta, jotta lääkäri Tampereella voisi suorittaa tarkastuksen..kummastuttaa. Lomakkeeseen, kuitenkin piti vain laittaa rasteja ruutuun ja raajojen kohdalle nyt rasti "not satisfactory". Ja vieläpä, kun sen ensimmäisen lääkärikäynnin diagnoosi (vai arvaus?) kädestä "aivan normaali" :D. Myöskään tulostin, tai oikeastaan mikään muukaan asia ei tee yhteistyötä kanssani, mutta en aio lannistua! VoimaSpiderManPaita päälle ja näytän elämälle ja kiireelle, et mihin ne voi painua! Olen aivan liekeissä ja voittamaton! HA. Epätoivon partaalla auttaa myös kanin tai Snoop Dogin silittely ja sateeseen tepsii Hait + uuusi sateenvarjo!

Vaan kuinkas sitten kävikään?

And just when I started to breathe again...I looked at my visa. It's valid until the August 31st. And my flight back to Finland is on September 11th. So there could be a problem right there. My daddy said that they could ask me to leave the country when my visa expires. Oh well, nothing I can do now! By the way that date 9/11 is a little intimidating, especially since my flight is from NYC :D 10th anniversary of the WTC-incident. Everyone it was nice to know you and everything.......

Vihdoin, kun luulin kaiken olevan hallinnassa..Kannatti katsoa viisumia. Se on voimassa elokuun loppuun, mutta lento Suomeen lähtee syyskuun 11. Oops. Iskä sanoi, että pitää ehkä poistua maasta silloin, mutta katsellaan sitä sitten. Asioilla on tapana järjestyä. Vähän kyllä kuumottaa tuo lähtöpäivä. Syyskuun 11. ja vielä NYC:istä, terrori-iskujen 10-vuotismuistopäivänä. No oli mukava tuntea!

Se hace camino al andar

 Pretty surreal feeling. Surreal, but nice. The countdown has begun- 11 more days. 11 more days until I will step into an airplane in Helsinki that will take me accross The Atlantic Ocean via London. I can't believe, all the stressfull paperwork is done, also all the red tape has been overcome! I even got my visa today!! Yet, there's so much to do. I haven't started packing and I'm atm holidaying at my parents'. But I'm sure everything will go smoothly and I'll get a summer to remember.
I haven't have a chance to stress about my actual work yet, but I'm sure it will kick in as soon as I have no other worries (e.g. Icelandic ash & fractured hand). I'm not quite sure what I need to do as a camp counsellor, but I know my camp "YMCA camp St.Croix" will be pretty big. There's going to be about 15 international staffmemebers + all the americans (I don't even know how many, but A LOT) and each camp will have over 100 kids!! Camps will start midway of June and are going to be over August 27th (pretty good day ;>). Before the first camp we will have some orientation so that's why I'm leaving on June 3rd already. Everything seems like a mess right now!!
Even though I have no path,  no worries, I'll create one myself.

Koko pitkä kevät tätä on työstetty. Eipä sitä talvella tiennyt mihin päänsä on pistänyt, mutta ei huolta, ei vieläkään ole mitään tietoa! 11 päivän päästä on rinkka selässä, lähtövalmiina Helsingissä yksi tyttö, jolla on edessä mainio kesä. Byrokratiaportaat on juostu ylös (menikin tosi kepeästi) ja viisumipapereista +haasatattelusta, jotka btw EI ole ihmsille tehtyjä, on selvitty miten kuten. Vielä on pakkaamiset edessä, jotka tosin eivät edisty täältä Tampereelta käsin kovinkaan jouhevasti. Sitten pitäisi tuhkat karistaa kantapäistä ja Islannista ja käsi hoitaa kuntoon, niin  olen valmis kesän viedä mennessään. Leiristäni en tiedä muuta kuin, että se sijaitsee Wisconsinissa, siellä on järvi, heppoja ja seikkailuja, ja että siitä on amerikkalaiseen tapaan tulossa ISO. Eiköhän muukin selviä kesän mittaan. Vaikka ei ole suuntaa, niin eiköhän sattuma johdata mukaville poluille!