First week of program!

AH! So the kids are here, they got here Sunday afternoon, and they are pretty awesome. There is a school group here from DC as well as 11 other campers. Only one of them is a returner, so most of them have never been here which is so cool.

Sunday afternoon we gave them the orientation at Swallowtail lighthouse and they had a bunch of fun even though it was frigid and windy. Then they came back to camp with us and got a site orientation, dinner, and pretty much unpacked and went to bed. It was very weird for me though, because at Calumet I was on from the second the kids got there to the second they fell asleep. Here, I barely did anything and it was all on the ORDs. Not complaining. More free time for me!

Monday we all got up nice and early for a whale watch aboard the Day's Catch!! I was so excited. SOOOOO excited. I took half a dramamine before going and THANK GOD because about 45 minutes into the boat ride, half of the people onboard were throwing up over the side. It was really foggy, and apparently the lack of a horizon line makes you really sick on boats. I was feeling a tiny bit weird, but literally WILLED myself to feel good because I wanted to see whales so bad. We saw two harbor seals and a harbor porpoise, but NO WHALES. I was pretty sad. It was the first boat trip of the season, though, so no one knew where the whales were yet. Ohhhh well. I will go again next week. The group is going out again tomorrow and Thursday whale watching, but I will be on campus doing curriculum development and having my day off. But I'm keeping my hopes high for next week! Hundreds of whales. I just know it. Anyways, after we got back to land everyone was so happy to be back on solid ground that it didn't really matter. Later in the day I taught my first lesson!!! It was about tides and the Bay of Fundy and why they are so extreme here (up to 54 vertical feet between low and high tide!!) which went pretty well. After dinner the ESIs are off of program, have a meeting as a staff, and then plan for tomorrow and go to bed. So different from the "camp" that I'm used to, but in a great way.

Today I taught a stream & pond lesson with two other ESIs down at Dark Harbor. The stream is really great for walking along and we had a lot of fun. We did some water quality tests with the kids, explained what a watershed is, had some boat races and the kids just explored. I've been in a group with the non-school group all week and they are sooo much fun. After we finished our lesson and ate lunch at the Anchorage, everyone went on the puffin boat and I came back here to do curriculum development. I came up with a Tide Pool Olympics activity that is pretty cool, and I'm teaching it tomorrow with my boss! Yay me! We're also collecting a bunch of tidal creatures and bringing them back to the camp and setting up an aquarium. I am so excited. I loooove stuff like that. I could literally spend all day finding thing at the tide pools.  YAHOO!


Other random facts:
My seaglass collection (and rock collection) is growing. There are beautiful lupines everywhere. Pheasants live outside and sound like roosters doing a half-crow. Coffee is now a twice a day essential.

i sure do.

Dark Harbor Stream

I LOVE BUGS. go go iphone camera.