bug-bitten and wind-blown

This week, I had my first-ever experience as a girls' camp leader. To be specific, I was the girls' camp cook.

And let me tell you (if I do say so myself), the food was pretty darn good. Let me give you a few examples:

• Banana boats: basically, to make banana boats, you take a banana (still in the peel) and slice it from top to bottom so you can open it up inside the peel. Then, you stuff the banana full of chocolate chips, marshmallows, toffee bits (with are excellent), coconut, etc., and when you are satisfied that nothing else could possibly fit, you close it up as possible, wrap it in tin foil, and place it directly on hot coals. Then after a few minutes, the chocolate and marshmallow get melted and gooey and delicious. It's basically amazing.



• Chicken teriyaki: another tin foil creation. We precooked the chicken so it would take less time, but you could definitely cook the chicken inside the foil. You take the chicken pieces with bell peppers, onions and teriyaki sauce, wrap it all up in foil, cook on coals, and serve over rice. I was apprehensive about it because I'd never tried cooking it before, but it was a big success.

Who says you can't have fabulous food at girls' camp?


There were also a few things I learned while I was at camp:

• No matter how big and fancy a tent, it is still subject to the weather. One of our tents was destroyed in the wind (unfortunatly, it belonged to one of the camp leaders and not to the church). The tent poles literally snapped in half. It was pretty intense; we were happy that it wasn't while anyone was inside.



• Gnats are really really REALLY annoying. Everyone probably agrees with me, but try to amplify a normal annoyance of gnats by six, and you would understand how our camp felt at the swarms of gnats we had to deal with. For some reason, I was immune to mosquitos, but my poor sister Hailey and her friend Maren were absolutely chewed to bits by both mosquitos and gnats. Hailey has been trying everything under the sun to get rid of the unceasing itchiness, from banana peels to hand sanitizer. Pobrecita.



• I can fit 44 of the small straight pretzels in my mouth in two minutes. We were playing a game with different types of challenges, from tying ties (which is hard for girls), to eating things like sardines and pretzels. I tried chewing at first, but after the first minute I was just shoving them into all the empty spaces. Right when the two minutes were up (I won!), I ran straight to the garbage can to spit them out; I don't think I'll be able to look at another pretzel for a long time. Oh, the things we do for the sake of competition.

Because we were camping by a reservoir, we took advantage of access to canoes, paddle boats, and my personal favorite, 2 or 3 person sailboats. After getting the hang of it, I pretty much rocked my sailboat.

I enjoyed being at girls' camp as a leader more than I expected to. Despite being plagued by gnats and wind, it was still a great experience.