Dodgeball, Swim Tests and Health Checks, Oh My!
Today was the first full day of the second session and what a packed day it was! The weather was perfect for village activities (lots of dodgeball) and swim tests. All of our four-week campers hopped in the lake to swim laps and tread water, the length determined by their age level. Swimming in a lake is always a bit different than swimming in a pool, but our boys did a fantastic job of handling any nerves and were very successful! The unique twist to dodgeball is that everyone had to stop and introduce themselves to the people that they had just eliminated. With the heat of the day, the Junior Village Dodgeball ended early in favor of a big water fight. The campers also had their entry physicals in the Health Center, and had time to continue getting settled, explore camp, catch frogs, play roofball, tetherball and get in a little fishing.
Our 8-week campers and counselors spent time teaching everyone the cheers, songs and camp traditions. One such unique North Star tradition is our birthday song. Today at dinner we celebrated four camper birthdays! Our baker Sandy has done a brilliant job throughout the summer baking cakes that are not only delicious, but are beautiful as well. Birthdays are always exciting over here in the Northwoods because the camperโs entire cabin gets to enjoy the cake, the whole camp sings to them, they get to make a birthday wish, and often they get woken up with a pizza party later that night.
But the fun did not end at dinner. Following dinner, we had our first Wanegan of the session. Wanegan is the Ojibwe word for store, and for our campers it means candy! Campers line up and sing for candy at the porch behind Cabin J-3, and campers go through the Wanegan line to a great deal of excitement and fanfare to choose their candy bar.
We followed up Wanegan with an all-camp game of Capture the Flag. We split into temporary green and white teams and based one team behind the Junior Village and the other on the athletic fields. The flags were flying tonight, with teams opting for quick offense and less defense.
Tomorrow is Cruiser Day and we have a great deal of excitement planned for each cabin all, All, ALL day long!
Today’s Grace:
โMy humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.โ
– Desmond Tutu