HELLO! It is 11:12 PM and I have to get up in about 6 hours to start travel day. OH THE JOY. Me and 3 other staff members are driving our 15-passenger vans across the ferry, across the border, and 3 hours into BANGOR, MAINE tomorrow to drop off the week 1 kids and pick up new ones! It is going to be an extremely long day but hopefully it will be fun and exciting. I'll atleast be back in the US for a few hours! We stay overnight in a hotel with the kids, then get up super early the next morning and drive back, cross the border, and ferry on over to Grand Manan to start week 2. It will be really really really tiring but then we get the next day off. So as long as I can make it til then, it'll be grand!
I'm not scheduled to be on any whale boats again this week, but hopefully things switch around so that I can finally see one! or four! At the campfire tonight all that the kids were talking about was how life-changing and awe-inspiring the breaching humpbacks were...and I sat in the corner and stewed in my jealousy. BUT. Eventually it will happen. I mean...its Whale Camp.
Rewind. Ok so after Tuesday was Wednesday. In the morning I taught my TIDEPOOL ECOLOGY lesson! It was amazing! We walked down to Red Point Beach and brought buckets and identification guides and just got to tidepool for about an hour. After that, we did my activity that I came up with during curriculum developement the day before called TidepoolOlypmics!! It. Was. Great. Basically each of the kids got to be one of the creatures in the tidepools, ex starfish or barnacle. There were four challenges, and in each one they either had an advantage or disadvantage that related to how they survived in the intertidal zone. It was really fun and basically taught them about how different animals have different adaptations to the zones they live in-- high, mid or low intertidal. Plus all of the staff that was with me said it was really great...so hurray! Anyways after that we talked about more sciency stuff like classification and zonation and got to look through their buckets to see what they found. It was awesome. After that I had another afternoon of curriculum development and basically spent it reading about whales. Highly enjoyable.
Thursday was my day off. I slept in and did not go to breakfast at 8AM. It was great. Then I took a journey on my own to the little bakeries and gift shops around the island and got an amazing chocolate croissant, a cinnamon sugar bagel, and a really cute Grand Manan shirt. I got back for lunch and then hung out with the ORDs (who are off in the day-time while kids are out on trips with the other ESIs). We went to Thrifty's, the island thrift store, where I got Levi's denim shorts and two awesome t-shirts for $3. What a steal. We also made our galaxy tank tops that we bought last week. Basically its a black tank top with bleach sprayed on...they were awesome. The day was a lot of fun and I got to explore and hang out with staff and buy some funky things.
AHH ok so today we had a staff meeting to talk about travel day and then took the 2-weekers on a trip to White Head Island and did the Indiana Jones hike with them. It was cold and rainy but not til the end, so it was pretty fun and they all seemed to have a good time. Then tonight was a campfire--indoors style because it had been raining all day. The staff did this amazing skit called Occupations, which was basically like "Proud to Be" that we used to do at Calumet campfires, and it was so funny I had such a great time. At the end, we passed around the "talking stick" and each of the kids said what was on their minds--we got so many kids who had changed while they were there or gotten so much more than they expected. One kid talked about how he is bullied at school and how he loved that everyone was so nice here. It was amazing. CAMP IS THE BEST. CAMPPPPP!!!!
Ok--need to go to bed now so I don't die on the road tomorrow. PICTURES LATERRR
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