An Interview

Today we are interviewing TrailHead Camper, Elise Anderson. She has just returned from her camping experience at Carol Joy Holling and has a few stories to share with us. 

Elise, What are your Top 5 Favorites from your week at camp?
5. Talent Show
4. Going to the caboose gift shop
3. Meeting new friends
2. Sno-Cones
1. Zipline!!! “We got to go twice and the first time I was hanging on so tight but then on the 2nd time I was like this (arms spread wide) and was singing “I believe I can fly!””  

Elise, you mentioned that you had a Kitchen Party. Can you explain what that was?
Well, it’s technically where you wash dishes. There is a sprayer and the person sprays off all the stuff and then that goes into a little crate and then it goes into the dishwasher. The dishwasher has to be at 150 degrees farenheiht. It takes about 3 minutes for the dishwasher to clean. Then you open it and slide the crate out and then you take all the stuff out of the crate and put it onto a tray with towels on it and then two people shake the dishes to get them all dry. And then you put them away and they call it a kitchen party because you listen to music and shake your butt while you are doing it.  

Did you get to go fishing?
We did once, but the poles were crappy. The poles just had a handle and a string and you couldn’t cast it out at all so you had to just sit there in the shallow part and we caught no fish.  

So what did you do while you were sitting there?
Nothing, we sat there and talked and told Mark that we weren’t going to catch any fish but he thought we were.  

Who is Mark?
Mark is the boy counselor. There is a girls tent and a boys tent and he sleeps with the boys. He’s really funny but sometimes he lies. He says he’s 28, has a wife, 3 kids and a dog. He also said the pool water was warm and really it was freezing and when I came out I was freezing. And then he made up this funny song that says, “Hi- my name is Jo, I have a wife and three kids and a dog” for a skit.  

Who was your counselor?
Her name was Tameca and she was super nice. She was from Jamaica and when someone cried at night, she sang to them and made them feel better. She has an awesome voice- she sings like an angel! When we were ziplin-ing she acted like a troll and she pretended to eat us- it was kind of like tag. And she gave me the courage to do the high ropes and then I ended up doing them except for the rock wall because that was stinkin’ hard because every rock was so slippery and small.

Tell me about where you slept?
We slept in a tent- there were a ton of bugs because Jada, (one of our roommates), had candy in her suitcase so a ton of crickets came in- Emily actually kept one! There were also wolf spiders and cockroaches. The floor of the tent was wood, but everything else was cloth and brown. It was super stable. On Tuesday night when it rained there was lightening and thunder but I didn’t hear it and the tent didn’t even move. On Thursday it was raining all day so we got to sleep in the Holling House- in air conditioning!! An air-conditioned room!  

What were the bathroom and shower situations like?
It was disgusting! The port-a-potties were all gross and brown and the seat was like the top of a toilet seat but then it was wood. The showers were disgusting too. Once, there was poop in one. But that day we were using the wrong shower. Again, Mark told us to use the wrong shower. We were supposed to use the forest showers and we used the showers closest to our tent. Mark was wrong-o!  

Who were your roommates?
There was Emily who was from Fremont. She was nice and was a tomboy.
There was Kaitlin. She yelled at me because I was taking too long in the shower.
There was Jada who was not very nice. She kept on bossing everyone around.
There was Abigail who is from my church. She hated bugs. She was my best friend from the tent! We were going to try to do boating together but then they told us who we had to go with- I had to go with Corbin, Cadie and Kaitlin. The paddleboats were the hardest to get back! They turned directly the wrong way. When we turned left it went right, when we went forward it went backward.
And then there was Cadie, another girl from my church. She was one of the girls who stood up for me when Kaitlin yelled at me in the shower. She was another one of my best friends there and I’m glad she was in my tent.

The boys on the other hand were plain weird. At night and in general, everyday all the time they would have burping competitions and made themselves burp. It was disgusting! One actually burped in my face. We could even hear them at night when they were in their tents and we were in ours. And also the boys went hiking in the middle of the night, and were screaming and woke up the girls except me because I was a heavy sleeper. Every day Tameca had to wake me up because I didn’t hear our alarm clock that were the geese!  

Tell me about the Thursday night talent show.
You had to do something with your tent, and Tameca made this up, we had to do “I love you” song from Barney- Booo!!! Everybody laughed! I was totally embarrassed and I wanted to run into a tree. I did something by myself- yay- It’s what I did for our school talent show except I did it acapella- I sang “We Are”. Everybody loved me. They clapped and whistled after I was done. Everybody gave me compliments Thursday night and all day Friday until mom and dad picked me up. I felt like a celebrity. Cadie did ballet. She was awesome!! After the talent show we ate Jolly Rancher popsicles which were del-i-cious!!!  

Tell me about your meals.
They were yummy!  

What was your favorite meal?
I would have to say on the first night, lasagna. I had a ton of food that night and it was super good. We also had sandwiches, hot dogs, hamburgers, cereal, eggs, boiled and scrambled, and desserts! Cake, brownies, popsicles and cookies and chips and ice cream.  

What kinds of things did you do after dinner?
Every night we had worship and played games. One night we had a campfire with smores. And the counselors did a little skit about how there was “chocolate queen” and “grahm cracker something” and “marshmallow stick giver” and there was a contest about how you did stuff. George, (one of the other counselors), he ran up and grabbed the stick and skipped and got a marshmallow and skipped to the campfire and he roasted it and you have to burn your marshmallow so he burnt it and then went to the grahm cracker place and mooshed it together and walked off eating it. And then Joey, the funniest counselor ever, he skipped up there and said “Oops forgot my cuppy” and then he skipped back and got his stick and he was super funny getting his marshmallow burnt and then he went up to the grahm crackers and kneeled at them and asked for grahm crackers- it was super funny. And then we got to have marshmallows. But we had to burn them, so I just burned my top. Joey won the contest because he was the best at asking for stuff.
Sometimes we had Bible Study.
One night we had water Olympics but they were no fun. We took a sponge and dipped it in water and your team had to fill up a bowl first. And then you had to take the sponge when the bowl was filled and empty it with the sponge and that was the only game we did in the water Olympics. We all hated the water Olympics. We had to change into our swimsuits for no reason.  

Did you go swimming other times during the week?
We went swimming everyday, except for Thurs and Friday. Before we go swimming we always have sno-cones.  

Why were sno-cones number 2 on your favorites list?
Because everyday they had a different theme. Monday was “The 70’s”- the people handing them out dressed up and Blue Raspberry flavor was called disco-ball. Tuesday was “Schools out for Summer”. Red was boiled hot dogs and lime was pickle juice. Thursday was doctor day- red was blood, orange was guts. You could have whatever you wanted, so most of the days I had them all mixed together.  

What was in the Caboose?
Well, it was a gift shop and it had stuffed animals, key chains, sunglasses, underwater cameras, pillow pets, jewelry, water bottles, t-shirts. We got to go in there once with my whole group and Tameca had a heat stroke in there because it was so hot. I also went with my family when they picked me up.  

How many times did you Worship?
Twice a day and sometimes 3 times.  

Did you learn any songs or prayers?
Yes- we learned a ton of songs. We learned “Fill my cuppy”, “Pharaoh pharaoh”, "Rise and Shine",… we learned a lot of songs!  

Did you get any mail?
Yes! A ton!  

Tell me about your Allergies…
There was a ton of pollen around so my eyes got all swollen and I could barely breathe through my nose and I had to actually have eye drops… they were super, super bad. But finally on Friday it got better.  

So do you think that you would ever want to go again?
Yes- I really want to go again, but I don’t want to have such bad allergies. Tameca was worried and there were a ton of people getting ticks- I never got one, but…  

Would you want to do TrailHead again or something different?
Well since I’ve already done TrailHead I want to go to Tipi Village because I am in 4th grade and old enough now.  

And what is at Tipi?
You get to sleep in tipis and do archery and get green cuppies. So Tipi sounds really fun so I might do that next year.  

Well, Elise, it sounds like you had a great week at camp! Is there anything else you would like to share?
One of my favorite songs is the shark song! And also the banana song!