Camp 2024

My camp diary

Day Three

It’s halfway through the day. I realised that I’ve been so tired at night that if I don’t make notes about the happenings throughout the day, I’m going to miss half of what was going on. After the first night being quite warm for sleeping, I was surprised last night by an extremely cold night. I was perfectly fine inside my sleeping bag but was still reluctant to take off my warm clothes before bed last night.

I woke up this morning around 7 and at 7:30 everyone else was up after Betuska played her trumpet and yelled out, “Budicek!” The kids all came scrambling out of their tents and headed off for some pre-breakfast exercise. We soon had breakfast - more kolace and coffee cake type items plus hot chocolate.

After breakfast was Nastup - my first opportunity to actually wear my new skaut kroj. It was completely sad and empty but that will change soon. So nastup is done every morning. Everyone wears their kroj and stand in a square shape around the flag pole. One one side of the square are the adults, rovers and rangers, on the next side are the svetlusky, next are skautka (girls) and on the last side are all of the boys. The camp doesn’t feel like it really has so many more girls than boys but when it comes down to it, the 3 leaders have a combined 11 kids, of which 10 are girls and 1 is a boy. So…I guess a lot of it comes down to that.

During nastup, we sing the czech skaut song, and announcements are made about plans for the day. This was particularly nice as every day, the kids learned about who were doing challenges, what they could expect for the day and on this particular morning, they were introduced to a new game that I brought: Killer. This was always an incredibly popular game with camp staff in US and I wasn’t sure how it would go, especially with the age ranges of kids. Needless to say, it was a hit. The premise is that everyone drew a marble and all except one were clear; one was blue. The person who drew the blue one was the killer. Their goal was to kill as many people as possible without getting caught.

Most of my day was spent organising and sorting through health forms and medications. In the morning, I organised all of the health forms and familiarised myself with other paperwork. In the afternoon, I moved onto organising the medications and also made a list of what was in there so that I could become more familiar. I spent some time with Jitka and we reviewed every medication so that I would know what was for what. A lot of them I knew, and so after writing out the list and what its usage was for, I was set.

Morning snack was mixed nuts and dried fruit.

Lunch was up next: tomato soup and chicken in a yellow sauce with rice.

After lunch, I continued with the medical supplies, and refilled all the first aid kits and made sure they were ready for trips.

Up next was a complicated game that involved all of the tribes and kids. The ultimate goal was that each tribe was given a map and they had to find their tribal shield in the forest somewhere. These were being guarded and so they had to stay safe and healthy. If they got attacked too many times, they had to get healed. While in the forest, they were also searching for items to decorate their tribal shields. This game was popular but as it was a very hot day, the wasps were out in force and the kids were running full out, so we had a full share of scratches, bruises, cuts and wasp stings to contend with. I was thankful for the updated medical supply cabinet. By the end of the game, the kids had a really nice collection of decorations for their shields and so set down to decorating. Each tribe decorated their shield and they all were different but really nice.

At evening nastup (less formal and done in the nicely painted indian costumes), we did an update on the murder game. An impressive 17 people had been killed throughout the day and Verca ended up accusing Fani of being the murderer and she was so the first round was successful. Later, I heard Fani saying she really didn’t want to be murderer again, which is why killing 17 people is so great! She’s usually really shy with people.

One of the regular events that happens at camp every day is an evening retrospective. The kids go with their troops, i.e. Vlcata, Svetlusky, Skauts, Skautky and R/R and basically talk about the day. What was good, what was bad and things like this. I went with the Svetlusky this evening and saw first hand how useful this was to getting everything out into the open. The kids talked about positive and negatives and were very receptive. Jitka asked them what they thought about the Killer game and they all loved it and wanted to play it again. They cheered when we said that we’d play it again tomorrow.

In the evening, there were more bedtime stories and another visit from Velky Orel. Everyone climbed up the hill to hear some stories. Some of the kids were fairly tired and wanted to go to bed early, so I stayed at camp with Terka, Kika, Lenicka and Fani. It was a nice time to get to know Kika better and she told me that she was preparing for a Rover/Ranger ritual that she was pretty sure was going to happen tomorrow..

Kika told me that she was pretty sure that tomorrow she would be dropped into the middle of a forest with just a map and told to find her way back to camp. This, of course, intrigued me, being used to the Girl Scout SAFETY FIRST mindset and the fact that nothing can be done without buddies. Apparently, this was a tradition that Klara started last year with Vorvan as a way to mark the transition from Skauts to Rovers/Rangers. Kika is now at that point and so she was pretty sure that she was next.

While Kika and I were discussing her possible excurion tomorrow, we were both being highly entertained by Lenicka. I think the highlight of the night was when she told us that she had packed 4 toothbrushes and then proceeded to spend 20 minutes at the toothbrushing station. She was enjoying herself though (Fani had gone with her but returned after about 5 minutes) and returned in a very good, giggly mood. She headed off to bed and soon after, as the light started to fade, everyone returned from the hilltop.

I’ve been having such a good time and having a nice balance of english and czech conversations. I’ve been surprised at how many people approach me and speak in english without prompting. I generally try to speak czech but if someone approaches and speaks in english, I reply the same.

I love being here. It’s strange that it’s exactly the SAME but also completely different from what I think of as camp. A strange statement but true none-the-less.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is hlidka. This is literally a guarding of the camp. The kids take time slots of 1.5 hours each and walk around camp in pairs, guarding it throughout the night. While this originally sounded crazy to me, I realised that there’s a good reason for it. Tonight, 10 of the oldest kids are heading off to another skaut camp to ambush it and try to steal their flag! THIS is what hlidka is for. To protect the flag and capture anyone who tries to steal it.

PS. I’m SO TIRED.