Camp 2024

My camp diary

Day One - Saturday, 27.7

I’ve been here for about 6 hours and it feels like it’s already been 6 days - in all of the best ways possible!

Stano, Wild Beastie and I arrived at camp around 3:30pm and wandered around for awhile. Boopsie surprised us by getting along pretty well with Klara’s dog, Mery, who is well known for not liking other girl dogs. We determined that because Boops is so small, she must be more like an annoying barking fly, rather than a big scary dog. Boops also ran after every person she met to say hi, chased sticks and had fun playing in the stream. At one point, she ran after Sofie and Marky, rolled over at their feet and begged them to pat her belly. It was a good start.

The other leaders were trying to figure out where people were going to sleep and so we left them to it. They figured it out and then I got to choose my tent. I’ll be absolutely honest (and to no one’s surprise) that I was thrilled to find out that all of the adults got a tent of their own. Between my requirements for alone time and the vast quantities of supplies that I’d packed with me, I was very happy. Stano helped me unload all of my things out of the car, then we said goodbye. He left with Boopsie for a few weeks of Papa/Puppy time! I wish I could say that I missed him and cried for him but I was so excited that I dove right into camp life.

After Stano left, I sort of unpacked my belongings in the tent, moved some boxes around to create a “bedside table” and then headed back outside to get some camp photos and to see what was going on. I spent some time with Profa and Neptun, helping them to get the totem pole installed by the camp fire circle, delivered some toilet paper to the latrines and then spent some time with Kika and Terka setting up some tents. We had a fun time, with an interesting mix of Czech and English as we worked our way through tent setup. The first tent we set up was for storing sports equipment and the second was a bigger tent for the Světlušky (little girls) to all sleep in together.

Around this time, dinner was ready. We had classic Czech spěkačky cooked over the fire with bread. After dinner, the girls wanted to play games and wanted me to come play, too. I learned three different games, again with an interesting combination of Czech and English used to explain the rules. By this point, Kika had taken on the role of translator so we had a good time trying to explain to each other what we meant, more or less successfully.

The first game was tu-tu-tu, called such because that’s the noise you have to make while playing the game. A big rectangle was marked out on the ground, maybe the size of a volleyball court, with a line marked down the middle where the net line would be. Players are divided into 2 groups and each group goes to a side. The goal is for your team to get everyone from the other team onto your side. So, one person takes a deep breath, runs across the mid-line and once they’re on the other side, they must say, “tu-tu-tu-tu…” without stopping until they run out of breath, then they must return to their side. While on the other side, they’re trying to tag people. If they tag someone and manage to get back to their original side without running out of breath, then the person that they tagged has to leave their side and join the first one. If, however, the other team catches the person trying to tag someone and they run out of breath before they get back to their original side, they then have to stay on the second side.

The second game was Bulldog. Again, same goal, same setup. One side says, “Bulldog” and then both sides approach each other. Team 1 has a goal of grabbing someone from the other team, picking them up and holding them off the ground for a count of 3. If they manage, they keep the pereson, if not, the other person goes back to their original side. There was some amount of strategy in this, as generally, it made sense to get the lightest people first, when there were fewer people on the team and then as the numbers increased, the bigger people were gone after. Everyone also informed me that this game frequently had a decent amount of injuries, because the person being held off the ground generally did a large amount of flailing to make it difficult for people to hold onto them. I had images of teeth flying everywhere and I did opt to skip this one, feeling that risking my newly functioning knee might not be the best of ideas.

The last one is the policeman-killer-victim game. This one took ages for me to figure out but fortunately the girls were patient with me and eventually I figured it out. You can read all the details here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)) but it’s an interesting game involving villagers, policemen and a killer (or more than one), phases of night and day and some guessing where people are trying to figure out who the killer is.

After games, the girls convinced Kika to bring out her guitar, so she did and played camp music. I found it interesting because I actually knew a fair number of songs - not from my time at camp but rather because apparently, a lot of camp songs here are also those done by Nedvědi.

Eventually, this ended, people headed off to their tents which is where I am now. I love it. The bedside table made of stacked boxes is great, my new USB chargeable lantern also works really well and in general, I’m feeling very happy. I was also pleased to learn that the tents have actual camp mattresses (foam). I wasn’t sure whether they would be used or if it would just be backpacking sleeping mats. I will say that while the tents are pretty unique and interesting, there are 2 downsides I’ve seen so far with the current layout. The first is that only one end opens and the sides don’t roll up which means there’s no good way to get a breeze through the whole tent which I missed. This is particularly the case because inside of being nicely shaded by trees, these tents are in the center of a very hot, sunny field. At the end of hot days, the inside of the tents were very hot, even with the tent flaps open.

One other entertaining note. We had to drive through the village of Trpík to get here and it was obvious that they were having some sort of village celebration. In fact, it’s still ongoing because we can hear the music from here. Either way, in the village there was a sign that said “Watch out for kids and drunk people!”

Enough for now. Tomorrow we head to the train station to pick up the kids and head back to camp with them. We already have about 10 kids at camp in the form of kids of the leaders. Tomorrow we collect another 20 or so and I’m really looking forward to seeing both the kids that I’ve already met but also all of the new ones! One more thing. There’s an adorable dormouse (yes, that’s spelled correctly) living in the kitchen building. The adults were sitting around the kitchen area chatting after the singing was done and he came out. I think he’s used to being fed, but he was so incredibly cute. I’ll see if I can get a photo of him.