My camps for the week were Crazy Kid Camp with the 9-12 year olds which I was in charge of running in the morning and helping out Charlene with the 9-12 Nick Camp in the afternoon. Having run Crazy Kid Camp just a few weeks prior I was pretty confident that the camp would run pretty smoothly and excited to begin my last week of camp I walked to camp talking with my co-workers about what a great weekend we had all had in Prague. As I had expected camp ran as 'smoothly' as I could have hoped for a Monday.
As it was our last week of camp we were required to put on a Dessertfest- a time for the parents to see what their kids had been doing all summer while enjoying some desserts. This Dessertfest included many songs which we were supposed to have been singing with the kids all summer, but since they had very short attention spans (especially the 9-12 group) we had never actually gotten through all the songs yet and our Dessertfest was on Tuesday.
So we had resolved to sing through all the songs that were to be performed at Dessertfest with the kids for both the morning and the afternoon camps on Monday and Tuesday and pray that they could pull it off. Well the closing songs (songs we sing at the end of camp to calm them down a bit-some involve sign language) were going pretty smoothly until one of our volunteers decided that in the heat we should have the doors and windows open to try to cool the room. This summer Germany experienced a particularly large number of hornets. These hornets are not typical hornets that if swatted at will go away, they are like magnets once they find you they don't leave you alone until you give them something better to be magnetized to...well a hornet found me while we were trying to sing through the song 'Peace Like a River' he climbed onto my nametag and was not going away. I thought if I could just get him outside he'd fly away and leave me alone...so I walked outside to shake him off...but he wasn't there anymore. Thinking the cursed insect was gone I began to walk back inside still trying to sing the song to keep the kids motivated to continue singing. All of a sudden I felt a very sharp pain followed by an even sharper one on my chest pretty much right under my nametag...the hornet had climbed inside my shirt and being angry that he was stuck decided to bite and then sting me. I immediatly screamed in pain as I shook my shirt and the confused creature flew out of it. The kids were completely not interested in singing the songs at this point and I was trying to bite back the tears of pain. The volunteer ran to get an ice-pack for the sting while Eric grabbed the tweezers to get the stinger out. He found the stinger but there was also a bleeding spot where it had bitten me. I stuffed the bag of ice handed to me by the volunteer down my shirt and sat back down with the kids and said, "ok well lets try that song again!" trying to sound like I wasn't in the most excrutiating pain. We sang through the rest of the songs with only a few more magnet hornets bothering us. I discovered it is very difficult to do sign language with a bag of ice in your shirt. I kept signing on the wrong side just to press the ice deaper onto my chest to try to dull the pain. The kids were all really sweet to me saying "man Miss Rita, today really isn't your day! Now you've got pink-eye AND a bee sting!"
At lunch Shauna called our PC to see if he was still planning on taking me to get pink eye medicine and he said he would be there shortly. I was very thankful I didn't have to finish the day of camp with all my maladies. The PC picked me up by 1pm and we headed into Landstuhl to see the doctor who could prescribe pink eye medicine to me. German doctors hold very strange hours...8-noon and on Monday and Thursdays 4-6pm. Go figure! So we went to the German hospital to see if they could help me. While in the waiting room the nurses kept looking at my bag of ice which was now melting but still hanging out the top of my shirt. I would shake my head and point up at my eye which at this point barely hurt at all compared to the pain in my chest. After waiting for about 15 minutes the PC went to talk to someone just to make sure we were in the right place. They then informed us that they had no doctor with a licence to look at eyes at the hospital and that I could see if the pharmacy could do anything for me. In my mind I was thinking how can they be a hospital and not be able to take care of eyes...what if someone came in with a plank in their eye about to die...would the emergency room turn them away because they didn't have an eye doctor then? We drove to the pharmacy hoping they could help us...but of course since I didn't have a prescription they couldn't. It was not 2:30 and I was ready to give up and go back to camp but my PC said that we could just hang out at the apartment until 3:40 and then we'd hop back in the car and be the first ones in line when the doctors office opened back up. So at 3:40 we did just that...and we waited outside the doctors office for about 20 minutes after 4 when we noticed a sign on the door with the picture of a palm tree and a set of dates...we realized this meant that the doctor was on vacation and would not be back until August 30th. Go figure! After much searching we found another German doctors office...this was difficult to do because doctors offices in Germany are in residential areas in normal looking houses except they have hours and maybe the medical symbol on the door. We got in and I was told the doctor could see me right away. He sat me down took one look at my eye and said in pretty clean english, "you have an eye infection often known as pink eye. it stings?" I told him it felt more like burning and he continued, "you will put eye drops in your eye 6 times a day until it goes away. you should stay away from kids and the sun, sound ok?" all I could say was "ok" and he gave me the prescription. Not thinking I would need to pay cash for anything I hadn't brought my Euro with my but the visit with the doctor cost me 21 Euros and all I had was the 1...they didn't take debit. Luckily my PC had a 20 and I promised I'd pay him back. We headed over to the pharmacy and I picked up the eye drops and some medice the pharmacist said would get rid of the bee sting...this also cost me 20 Euros and they didn't take debit, luckily there was an ATM across the street so I was able to get the money to buy the medicine and pay my PC back.
It was 4:40 and camp ended at 5pm so there was no point going back to camp, but the Day Camp people at the School Age Care Center were putting on their Dessertfest so we headed over there to see how their kids did this summer. That was my Monday.
By Tuesday my eye was already feeling a whole lot better thanks to the medicine. Camps went pretty well that day and we finally got it into the kids heads that they needed to know the songs for our Dessertfest that evening.
Dessertfest was held in the gym of our facility. We had the bleachers pulled out for parents to sit on and eat. Tables set up with projects the kids had made and a slide show running with pictures we had taken of the camps throughout the summer. The desserts were all delicious and we had a pretty good turn out. We started the evening with a Blitz (a song/dance activity we do at the beginning of camp) and sang through some of the kids favorite songs. Then us counselors put on a skit where we played the arms for other people and did things like shaving, brushing teeth, eating cereal, and putting on make-up...it was a complete mess since us arms couldn't see what we were doing, but the kids and their parents seemed to enjoy it. Then we got the kids back up for our closing songs and the kids actually did a good job remembering them. Overall it was a very successful evening.
Wednesday and Thursday continued without much trouble. We began to clean up the center of all the items we had used during the summer. I was so excited to start Friday's camp. "The last day of camp and then I get to go home!" was all I could think about. But at the end of the first camp a parent came in to say goodbye and while her children (who I had had every other week this summer) were well composed the mother was a wreck, crying, and red faced. She told us this was the best summer her family had ever had on base and how thankful she was that we were there...this got my waterworks running. At the end of the second camp day we held an all camp closing where we sang a few songs and I stood up to say "I would like to sing 'World's Greatest'..." and I lost it, I finally choked out, "because I have had the world's greatest summer and you all are the world's greatest kids!" I tried my hardest to keep singing but could barely see through the tears. The other counselors started crying too as they felt the weight of reality hit...this was the last time we would ever see these kids...and we had an awesome summer with some of them.
Leaving the center for the last time was very surreal...seeing a few of the kids that were still there waving at us. One little boy said "Miss Rita, I'm gonna miss you! Will you send me a postcard?" nearly broke my heart how big his brown eyes were when asking such a simple request. I agreed and got the address from his mother. When I got into the Sea-Tac airport one of the first things I did was find a good postcard to send to him.
I will forever be changed by my experience with these kids this summer, and I hope that some of them will be changed too.
The picture is of the team I played on just after we found out we won. Yes that kid's afro was real.
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