Monday 5th July 2010

Udi, the camp programmer and chief teller-offer came to my cabin before and said ‘do you want me to talk to your girls, yeah?’ in his heady Sri Lankan tones. I was a little apprehensive at first since my cabin had actually listened to my blunt words this morning and we’d had a pretty nice day. However, after leaving them during playground time, a ruckus had formed via the medium of: boys. How my girls have managed to avoid all this silly boy nonsense for this long, I’ll never know. Actually, how dare they tease me with pretending they weren’t interested! 3 days left to go, I thought I’d got away scot-free yet alas, bedlam is running amok the cabin in the ghastly memorable form of two girls liking one boy, the boy likes one of the girls, they go out and the other is majorly upset. I managed to cheer up said girl with a sneaky milkyway (this is rapidly turning into my strategy for all stressy situations. Hi, I’m Chelsea and I’m a comfort eater) but with all the gossip and tantrums bundled in there, my cabin was not in a happy place. Due to this, I gave Udi the nod, he slapped Emma and I on the backs and stormed into the rickety white chasm of hostility.

Emma and I, perched on the golf cart outside, gave up trying to listen in after 2 minutes but the fragmented interjections only confirmed that Udi was tackling some heavy stuff.

Twenty minutes later, the door swung open and Udi strides out looking somewhat serene and states ‘they’re good now guys’, before hopping on the golf cart and speeding off to the counsellor quarters.

Emma and I exchange confused looks before anxiously entering the cabin. I imagine a war scene in front of me: pillows torn in half, mattresses bearing smoking wounds and children lying strewn across the parched floor, but in reality everything is just as it was but now, the girls are gathered in the middle giggling together. The only 2 not getting involved are perching on opposite beds before one whispers ‘I’m sorry’ to which the other reciprocates ‘I’m sorry too’. They get up, hug it out and before I know it, I’ve got my arms around them too going ‘Oh my sweet children! What a beautiful moment!’ but in my head I am absolutely and completely perplexed. How on earth did Udi manage it? How on earth did the guy that I know mostly from making inappropriate comments at Oglethorpe manage to subdue a group of 8 girls in a few swift minutes? I’ve been trying to do that all week and kapow, he’s done it: gold medal, personal best and world title goes to Mr. Udi.

I’m back off my break now and they’re all asleep as Al Green simpers away in the background. My sleep playlist for them is called ‘The Mellow Mix’. The Beatles ‘Blackbird’ (my 3rd favourite song ever) has just come on- I’m trying to make them subconsciously like all of my music. I don’t know how many more times I can listen to Usher before I googlemap his house in Atlanta, trek up there and sing ‘OMG’ 2844 times outside his bedroom window. Oh Cold War Kids, ‘Audience of One’! How do they not like these songs?! It is a travesty and that’s the damn truth.

So, it’s 3 days to go and we’re starting to get on. Karen’s going to step in soon and say ‘I told you so’ after she found me desperately clutching onto my mug of PG tips this morning and clawing the table in front. Alas, bring on this ‘norming’ and then maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a decent night’s sleep and my face will stop scaring the 5 year olds. I’m swiftly moving from ‘British Girl’ to ‘Gritish Girl’. Today I looked down and thought ‘Oooh Chelsea, you look tanned’ before I realised that it was just dirt. But hey, the truth is that though I’m lying in a clammy cabin with bugs kamikaze-ing against my computer screen and my face looking like a gaunt vagabond, there’s nowhere I’d rather be right now. So avast ye negativity, set your sails and unburden my shores for I’m going to make sure that the last 3 days of session ‘the things that dreams are made of’. Oh yes Human League, you’ve had it down for years.

Kids say the funniest things

Girl trying to get out of getting her daily calcium intake:
Girl: Milk is worse for you than cigarettes. My Mom told me.

Counsellors say the funniest things

I should explain that we have a big board up in the counsellor room where we can give each other ‘warm & fuzzy’ messages. My ‘warm & fuzzy’ from Ricky read:

‘I’m so glad you’ve got a base tan. Your original color was starting to hurt my eyes’.

Total bug bites to date
27. In the sweet words of The Beatles, ‘it’s getting better all the time’.