Week 7 at Siena

This week, I experienced more turmoil at the Albany United Methodist Society as our first campers arrived. Preparation work on the building was completed just the day before our second scheduled start of the summer program.

On the day of the opening, Maura and I were very concerned that no children would come in. Indeed, after an hour of inactivity, it seemed as though our fears would be confirmed. Then a father and his two sons came in and I was introduced to another Jason, this one ten years of age. He and his brother Ryan were the only clients I had to deliver my seven youth employees, so one of the first issues that would persist throughout the week became painfully clear. As the day waned on, only two more children arrived, a brother and sister named Harrison and Trinese. This meant that even if I specifically assigned a counselor to a child, I had three extra counselors on hand with absolutely nothing to do. They quickly became disinterested in their jobs and sat talking to each other or looking at their phones for most of their shifts. This situation persisted into the afternoon shift, where the counselors simply counted the hours until the program day was over.

This first day was repeated with slight variation on the next two. Two more campers, sisters Divinity and Nativitiy, joined our group, but with six children the majority of the activities I had planned during the first month here, carrying the expectation of twenty or thirty members, were rendered useless. The campers were more than content to play sports and run around inside the gym or put their creative spirits to work via arts and crafts. Most of the campers took to most of the counselors fairly quickly, with Jason and Ryan being the exceptions. While they adored me and constantly sought out my attention, whenever I needed to leave the program area for administrative duties they attempted to find me unsupervised, causing more than one headache.

On Friday, our scheduled field trip days, the campers besides Jason and Ryan (simply didn't show), myself, Maura, Cari, and our camp nurse Roberta took a trip to Methodist Farms, a private campsite/vacation area for members of the methodist network churches. It was a gorgeous day out and we were able to swim in the lake onsite for hours, much to the extreme joy of our campers. The men and women running the farm prepared a delicious lunch for us and we spent some great time together with them eating and sharing some information about ourselves. By the time we got back to Albany, we were all exhausted from the effort but supremely glad to have gone out.