Impeesa Weeks 1 & 2, Year 3

So I've been gone for the two week overnight camp. I had a weekend off in the middle, but I worked both days and had a few other obligations which distracted me from updating my blog.

Both weeks were at Impeesa, which was the location I did both overnight weeks in my first year, and I did one week there last year as well.

I spoke on this last year, but "Impeesa" is pronounced "Im-pess-ah" and was the nickname of Robert Baden-Powell, who was the founder of Boy Scouts when he was fighting in Southern Africa. His enemies called him this, and he told his friends it meant "The Wolf That Never Sleeps". However, in the Ashanti language, which was the language of the people that named him, it means "Hyena" and is a derogatory term. It's probably still an honour to receive such an insult from your enemy, however. You don't want your enemy cheering for you, right?

Our activities were pretty standard. We had campfires on Tuesday and Thursday nights, movie night on Wednesdays, and a formal dance on Thursdays. We had groups go out on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for swimming at a pool in Paris, Ontario, and we had a reflection painting activity on Thursday. Otherwise, time was pretty free. We ran nature walks, played chess, checkers, othello, did a puzzle (failed to finish it this year), played frisbee, football, soccer, volley ball, etc.

First week, one of our participants brought her collection of DVDs and offered them for movie nights. Our official night was voted in for Wreck It Ralph, which is about a video game villain who would like recognition for his participation in the game he's been involved in for the past thirty years. When he is not accepted, he moves onto other games and the people who took him for granted struggle to find a replacement for him.

It came across as a weird, cartoon, tech-based version of the Hindu mythology surrounding Shiva, the god of destruction, and Parvati, the goddess of creation in Hindu mythology. One participant made the situation more ironic by pointing out that the "Fix It" guy wants to break free, while the "Wreck It" guy wants to build a place for himself.

We also watched Tangled since Wednesday was an indoor camp fire due to weather. Didn't watch most of it since I had other obligations, but I've seen it before. It's based on the "Rapunzel" story, it's animation style, title, and the time of release are similar to the more famous Frozen so the two often get compared.

My cousin visited during this time. She got to meet all the participants, we played the President card game, and she got to meet my coworkers

On my day off, me and the other guy I was spending it with watched Suicide Squad. Like a Superhero flick with the protagonists being former villains. I can appreciate using former villains as heroes, as the path to villainy is more complex than the path to heroism, and thus seems to inspire more creativity for writers. But it felt like there was too much content to be covered in the time length of the movie, and so the Squad members and their relationships with one another felt underdeveloped. I feel like that's the criticism I give every team-based superhero flick. I guess the length of a movie just isn't sufficient to fully develop an entire team. Sucks because I like teams better than standalone heroes. I like the team dynamic, clashing personalities, more specified abilities.

In Suicide Squad, I really wasn't feeling Captain Boomerang, and I wanted more of a psychological break from El Diablo when he first cut loose.

Back at the camp, despite having two dances yearly, I've only been to one. First year, my break was on Thursday evening, night of the dance, both weeks. Next year, I got one dance in but the other was canceled. Third year, one dance was on a scheduled break, and then the next week I was free on the night of the dance but another pair had some errands to run and wanted to trade with us.

There's an established tradition that staff on their night off bring a treat for the rest of the staff after hours. In the first two years, I've been the one tasked with the finishing treat. Because we switched nights off, I got to close the year for the third time in a row.

On our nature trails, I tended to get lost, and therefor we wandered off the beaten trail and came upon a giant ornamental face fixed to a tree. We named this discovery "Tree Face" and it became a regular walking destination. My phone camera wouldn't upload a photo, but here's a painting, done by yours truly.

I'm afraid I turned Tree Face into a bit of a false idol. I asked everyone to tell Tree Face something they were thankful for.

I said "Thank you Tree Face, for the harvest of bagels we dined on this morning"

A participant said "That wasn't Tree Face, that was you!" I said "I am simply a humble servant of Tree Face. Thank you Tree Face, for helping me guide this camp!"

I also thanked Tree Face for protecting us from Drumbo Dan, which is a ghost that supposedly haunts Impeesa because he lost his feet, and St. Pete says he's incomplete (story is told as a rhyming poem). So he needs to cut off someone's feet at night that are the right size so he can attach them and cross the pearly gates. I really think that heaven is inaccessible based on these rules, calling certain people "incomplete" and not letting them in based on a mobility issue. It's like the same people that run Wild Water Works also run Heaven. 

I painted the above image of Tree Face during our reflection painting exercise. I have two other paintings from my first year hung on my wall.

During my second break, we went to The Works which is a pretty infamous Ontario-based chain of gourmet burger restaurants. They pride themselves in their bizarre menu options. For example, several options come with peanutbutter as a topping, there's a Kraft Dinner topped burger, they had the infamous Reese Cup burger.

Menu's kind of judgemental. There are "Right" and "Wrong" options. For example, there's a "Plain Jane" burger, "Ho Hum #1", and "Ho Hum #2" which get made fun of in their descriptions. I'd be intimidated to order the "First Date" burger, too. Patties come in beef, chicken breast, ground turkey breast, veggie, mushroom cap, crispy chicken, cheese stuffed beef, bacon & beef, and elk.

I got the Man O' War (onion, horseradish, dijon, and gouda) with an elk patty. It was pretty good.

The treat we brought back was a bottle of non-alcohol champagne and some cream puffs and mini cheese cakes that we plated like hor d'oeurves. We toasted a successful year. Remember how at the beginning I said the year was too easy? Well, it really never got much harder. Aside from a few rough spots, everything went smooth. We championed this year.

Wacky Water Week/Prep Week 3

So I haven't updated since Wacky Water Week, and since then, we've finished with our Prep Week for the Overnight Camp.

Our first day was at WALES, since it was a civic holiday and the school can't host us on holidays. In years previous, we've had a day at WALES for Canada Day during Around the World Week, but this year that fell in one of our Training Weeks, so our WALES day got put off until Wacky Water Week.

We played Water Balloon Toss, where people paired up and threw a water balloon between each other. If you caught it without it breaking, you made it to the next round. If it exploded, you stepped out of the competition.With every successful attempt, contestants had to take steps away from each other to increase difficulty. Of the three rounds, I managed to take one win with my partner.

We did water gun painting this day as well. For this activity, we lined up canvases and participants shot paint at them with water guns. First we had the group make a collaborative effort to donate to Extend-a-Family, then everyone got to make their own individual work to take home with them.

We had a water relay race this day as well. The staff member's team that won this competition had a bucket of water poured over them. For some reason, we found an excuse to pour a bucket of water over another staff member as well.

A number of participants missed this day, since it was technically a holiday, When one member asked what she missed, I said "It was the most fun that Summer Program has ever been, or ever will be" to tease her. When she asked for specifics, I mentioned the water balloon toss, the water gun paintings, and the staff getting soaked with buckets of water. This was enough to convince her I wasn't joking when I said this day was the most fun ever.

We got a lot of paint on the area we did our craft. As we were cleaning up, I jokingly mentioned that it was a good thing that we had forgotten to include "Respect school/organization's property" in our Program Guidelines that week. Of course we cleaned up our paint anyway.

Next day we had Sponge Capture the Flag, which was split into four teams, with bean bags representing flags Sponges and water guns were made available to tag people with. This year, we limited the safe zone to a small area around the flag and made most of the playing area No Man's Land to discourage people from guarding their flags.Staff were given water guns to discourage people from playing safely.

Somehow, participants got ahold of water guns and started shooting staff. Everyone started firing on everyone. Some rules continued to be observed, such as some people shouting "SAFE ZONE" when they were in the area that they were not allowed to be fired on. But otherwise, people seemed to generally forget about the objective of stealing bean bags, and fell on the prerogative of soaking opposing teams even without a point system.

Partway through, I had to refill the water buckets and put the temperature on full cold without thinking about it. After a few complaints, people decided to demonstrate their misery by unloading on to me! So most of the formal rules fell away, but the game was still ridiculously fun. Not sure if that makes it a win or a fail.

Wednesday we had Drum Fit, which is usually our Get Your Game On visitor, but this year we had X-Movement so Drum Fit came at this time. We had a fire drill though, which set things back a bit. When we were outside waiting for things to be sorted out, we decided to play a circle game. Asked the participants what they wanted to play, and someone said "Darling If You Love Me" which received  a murmur of praise around the circle. Us staff thought we knew all the circle games, but none of us had heard of it.

Super fun. You have someone in the centre of the circle. They choose someone and say "Darling if you love me won't you please, please smile" The person being spoken to must reply "Darling, you know I love you, but I just can't smile." If the person being spoken to smiles, they must replace the person in the circle and attempt to make someone else smile.

Double edged sword because I wanted to go around telling people to tell me they love me, but I also didn't want to lose. I was a pretty cold hearted snake, with only one person able to make me smile.

Drum Fit was fun, as always. It was a bit shorter because of the fire drill. If you don't remember what Drum Fit is, it's an activity where an instructor guides you through practices including an exercise ball and a set of drum sticks. It just seems fun at first, but slowly weans you into more intensive exercises.

Later on that day  we played Air Raid, which is basically Mission Impossible with water guns (how can you go wrong?) and we had a tie dye craft. Tie dye was facilitated by two other program leaders while me and another leader were inside hosting games for the group waiting. We played Huckle Buckle, Crocodile's Treasure, and What Time is it Mr. Wolf.

Thursday I got to host the event of the year, Reverse Paintball! This is another annual event in which participants get to paint the staff, then shoot water guns and throw sponges at us to knock the paint off. In years past, participants have just gone crazy with the paint. This year, I basically had to give them permission to put paint in my hair, beard and on my clothes.

I've got my Reverse Paintball shirts from years previous hung up on my wall. First year I wore a white shirt, second year I sacrificed a staff shirt. I had a big dilemma regarding whether or not I should use an orange staff shirt this year. If I used an orange shirt, it would look different from years previous and sort of complete the collection. But I thought the end result had looked better on the white shirt than the staff one. Of course, we were using orange instead of green this year, and I thought orange might make the colours "pop" more than the green ones. But no way orange beats white. White is basically a canvas waiting to be painted on. And I feel there's something fun and disarming for the participants to see us out of our staff shirts.

So I opted to use white. And now that the shirt is dried, I think it looks too much like my Year 1 shirt to display. Kind of regret not using orange.

Our special Friday trip was to Wild Water Works in Hamilton. This is the third time we've been, you might remember me mentioning they have a wave pool, water slides, and a lazy river. I didn't touch the lazy river or water slides this year, I just supported people in the wave pool. Which is fine, it's a pretty amazing wave pool.

Wacky Water Week was crazy fun.

I got Monday and Tuesday off for Prep Week. During the remaining three days, we developed a meal plan, scheduled activities for the Overnight, went grocery shopping, wrote receipts, looked at client files, and did some team building stuff.

During the past two years, one of my breaks has been on the last night of the year. Since we bring a treat back to the team on the night off, I've had to deal with the pressure of delivering the final treat. Not this year.

Grocery shopping is always so much fun, because you get to buy in bulk. Last year I was on the meat cart, which just made me and the person I was with look like massive carnivores. This year I was on grains which just isn't as exciting. We did a lot better with the budget this year.

Last year we let the new people develop the meal plan without being allowed to see the old one, and they basically replicated it exactly. This year we did the same thing, and it's still pretty similar but we did turn out a few new ideas.

Our team building stuff included a lip sync battle, which was super uncomfortable, they made me be Barbie from Barbie Girl and perform in front of one of the Extend-a-Family higher ups. Sadistic. Then we played a game where you are given the name of someone significant from the Summer Program, but you don't get to see it and everyone else is. Then you go around the table asking questions and see if you can figure it out.

Excited for the Overnight. This year both weeks are at Impeesa. They've got a more accessible ramp this year (inconsequential to us since we don't have anyone in wheelchairs, but it's still nice to see) and they put in a new roof. Looks good.

Get Your Game On 3

This past week was Get Your Game On. Our special Wednesday visitor was someone from "X Movement", an Australian based sports-themed session. We imitated Australian animals such as the kangaroo, platypus, and crocodile, merging into our next game, "Crocodile's Treasure" where we had to sneak up and steal a volley ball from him. It was similar to "red light green light" if you consider the times that the crocodile was awake to be "red light" and the times it was asleep to be "green light" and the crocodile's treasure was the finish line.

We learned to play "Netball" a sport similar to Basketball but without the net. We learned to pitch in Cricket. Steps included "Grip, hip, step, point, rock, roll".

One time he said "Grip on" and I thought he said "Gryphon".

Guy was super charismatic, but the activities didn't include equipment we didn't already have, and we probably could have facilitated all of it. Like, the reptile show guy had reptiles, the magician had magic tricks, and the Karate guy had a blackbelt. X-Movement guy had an accent, which just doesn't come across as a special resource.

The Friday trip was bowling and swimming at the Swimplex. You can't really go wrong with a day like that, because most people love bowling, and most people love swimming, but both activities are common enough that it's a bit less special.

I had my first sick day last Wednesday, breaking my perfect attendance over the past three years. That was a bummer.

Otherwise, we had Soccer Baseball, an award's ceremony, a sports circuit, a mason jar monster craft, and I got to facilitate Mission Impossible. That's a game where participants sneak from one end of the gym to the other to steal bean bags from Program Leaders. Hiding places are set up made from mats, benches, hockey nets etc. Program Leaders shout a number of seconds when participants are allowed to move, then turn around and any participants spotted must return to the beginning point to try again. The team that has the most bean bags in the end wins. Super fun.

The school I work at is air conditioned. Don't think I've mentioned that. Two years ago, the school I worked at was not, even though it had the equipment to. Second year, they had air conditioning... except not in the gym, which is where we spent most of our time. This year, at our new location, we've got an air conditioned school with an air conditioned gym. Pretty awesome. The janitors that work here are also super cool. You'd be surprised how much influence a custodial staff has on the impact of a summer program.

The school I work at has blocked Pokemon Go. I mean, this game only started after school had been let out. It's like, someone saw me waiting on my boss to let me into the school, crouched outside, oggling a Jinx near the principle's office, ready to pounce. And this person thought "Before I let them in, I'm going to make sure they can't play Pokemon Go at work"

Pokemon Go

I'm interrupting the Summer Program formula of having weekly updates based on themed weeks for this new Pokemon game.

You've likely heard of the new smartphone app, Pokemon Go, even if you don't have the app and are not a fan of Pokemon. It basically turns our world into the Pokemon World.

It makes use of the GPS system and places Pokemon everywhere. By looking through your camera, you can see Pokemon appearing anywhere on this planet! And it takes environmental factors into equation. For example, if you're near a body of water, you will find more water-type Pokemon, if it's at night, there will be more ghost-types, and if it's a thunderstorm, you will find more electric-types.

Supposedly, Nintendo’s profits have spiked higher than it has since before I was born. Even the introduction of Pokemon itself was not this big.

Places where large numbers of people gather become Pokestops or Gyms. Pokestops allow you to collect random items such as Pokeballs or eggs. Pokeballs give you the opportunity to catch more Pokemon, and eggs allow you to place them in incubators that result in them hatching after you've walked a certain distance. It's pretty fun to find out that the Kitchener Public Library, the KPL Kids Section, and the sign outside are all Pokestops.

Apparently it’s been leaked that McDonalds branches will all become Pokestops. Outside of giving people the option to buy Pokecoins with real money to buy PoGo items, PoGo is hoping to receive income by allowing large corporations to use themselves as Pokestops to attract customers.

Gyms allow you to fight teams that have been left behind by other players. Fought in my first Gym today, at the Conestoga Mall Museum. I didn't know what I was doing and thought I got my team wiped out, but it said I won.

You can set incense to attract Pokemon to you, or set lures. At level 5, you can join a team based on one of the three Legendary Birds. The electric Zapdos of Team Instinct, the icy Articuno of Team Mystic, and the fiery Moltres of Team Valor. I’m Team Mystic.

It advertises itself as a way of countering our society’s introverted nature by calling people to go outside, to explore, and interact with other trainers. It also encourages physical fitness through the step-counter function of hatching eggs.

However, merging the virtual and real worlds has had its hazards, with people too focused on one or the other. For people too focused on the game, there’s been reports of people walking into busy streets or other hazardous areas because Pokemon have appeared there. People too focused on this world and how they can exploit a game have set lures in obscure locations, not to lure Pokemon, but people, resulting in robberies and kidnappings.  And the random nature of Pokemon spawning has had people wandering out into obscure locations and finding dead bodies and the like.

In Kitchener, a Lapras showed up in Victoria Park. Apparently some course was taking place there and everyone dipped mid-session for the opportunity to catch it.

Of the Summer Program team, I am now one of four of us to have it. Unfortunately, I’m the only one of the four to not have a cell phone plan with data, That means I can only play in areas with wifi. It really takes away the feeling of being on a Pokemon hunt, when your friends are out on nature trails, and you’re wandering around Wal Mart. When I got my new cell phone plan, I got this righteous deal where I got Canada-wide anytime minutes and unlimited texting for $10 less from my previous plan, just without data. The guy pitching it tried really hard to convince me I needed data and I insisted I didn’t. If I knew that the Pokemon World would become a reality for people with data, I would have reconsidered. They don’t even let the pedometer run offline.

My brother got a smartphone just for this game. He’s got a plan with data.

As it is, I’ve got 20 Pokemon registered in my Pokedex. My rarest Pokemon is probably my Jinx, since I’ve only run across one and in the original games they were decently rare. I found a Ghastly in my room, so I guess my room is haunted.

Your Pokemon Trainer name needs to be unique, meaning no one else in the world can be using it. After I tried “Gryphon”, I figured any variation would be taken, so I used MisterAliphant, because my Malian name is “Ali” and I was called the “Elephant”. Merge those names and you get “Aliphant” but sinc e”Ali” is often a girl’s name over here, I felt the name was a bit androgynous, so I made it MisterAliphant. I explained this at lunch at work and the room exploded into laughter. Don’t really know why it caught such a reaction.

But I really messed up, because I’m the only “GryphonSibbald” in the world. I had the opportunity to put that on lock when nobody else would find their names available, and I missed it.

Right now they’re only using the original 150 Pokemon, but just you wait, they’ll be putting every generation in with time. I guarantee it.

Hidden Talents and Vibrant Volunteers 3

Well, I've been meaning to do a Hidden Talents update, but life's kept me busy and now we're into the Friday of Vibrant Volunteers week.

During Hidden Talents, I busted out the fanny pack. As it was a symbol of last year's group, I was hoping for a dramatic time when I would have to call on the strength of the Fanny Pack. But as things moved forward, I came to realize things were not going to go out of hand, and that a fanny pack is really useful for keeping attendance sheets and weekly schedules.

On Tuesday we had a Karate blackbelt come in to teach us a few basic techniques, give us a history of the art, show us some katas (fights against imaginary opponents, kind of like a dance), and show us some weapons. This person was related to someone on the team, so we got a free show. It was pretty cool, like a second Wednesday special visitor.

Our special Wednesday visitor though, was Five the magician. Two years ago we had Five, and he dazzled and amazed us. I know I've said this before, but I find magic shows all the more incredible as an adult than as a child. As a child, I would just write it off as being magic and accept it. As an adult, I know magic in this form is not real, and I've watched videos and heard things on how it's done. But even when you try to look in diagonal motions when he's moving linearly, you're still left to wonder how he made a balloon turn into a rabbit when the rabbit is larger, or how he turned a fire into a live dove. It taunts you.

But while Five's tricks two years ago were amazing, his stage presence was lacking. One time, he pulled one of our people from the crowd, gave her a cup of water and told her to throw it at him when he shouted "Red Alert!" Without prompt, the cup of water got thrown into him and he had to stand awkwardly in his soaking suit.

He tried to be a mind reader for one of our guys, and the person who came up lied about his name, exploiting his inability to read minds. Five tried to give humorous fake-out predictions "You're thinking about eating lots of vegetables!" but our guy would just say, "Hey, that's right!" making his obvious attempt to be wrong fall flat.

He put a bunch of scarves into a hat and upturned it, letting them all fall out, which was supposed to be an intentionally bad show before moving on to more convincing tricks. But our group gave him an applause, to which he stammered that he'd never been with an audience so kind.

He kept trying to use the program leaders as examples for tricks until we rejected him. Then he wanted our coordinator to select people who could perform his tasks. Then he had to check in to see if they could stand in a line for balloon animals.

Next year, we had two magicians who were more charismatic but with weaker tricks. One moved around a puppet and pretended it was alive, then started pulling coins out of peoples ears. Like every Mom ever doesn't know that one.

This year, Five's tricks were as spectacular as ever, and his stage presence was so much stronger. He really blossomed into a beautiful magician. He gave a list of balloon animals he could make at the end, which I respect. Nobody should leave themselves vulnerable to whatever the requester decides for a balloon animal. But when someone asked for a squirrel, he said he couldn't do it and offered a rabbit. But when someone asked for an Incredible Hulk, he went for it. Like come on Five, just make a rabbit with shorter ears and a longer tail and call it a squirrel.

Our Friday trip was bowling and a movie. I got my one mandatory strike in while bowling, so I was satisfied. The movie we watched was Secret Life of Pets, a story about how pets are more intelligent than we give them credit for, a theme I feel I've often seen revisited. The other option was Finding Dory, which I've seen before, so I was happy to see something new just for the diversity.

Last year we watched Minions, which I really did not enjoy too much. But because of the nature of my work, I wound up watching it four times.


For Vibrant Volunteers, I got to facilitate for a flower pot painting activity. Last year, I may have mentioned that we did a flower pot painting activity and that it produced a great revelation inadvertently surrounding pen theft. We leave our crafts on our front desk to be picked up by participants. When they are not picke dup, they kind of remain as a decoration. Our flower pots are made of painted flower pots, artificial flowers taped to pens with green painter's tape wrapped around to give the impression of a stem, and marbles to replicate earth. This year we got fake moss to replicate the earth.

But in years previous, people would pluck a flower from its pot and write from it. We never had a pen thief using this method, because nobody would absent-mindedly leave a pot empty or expect someone not to notice. Like the gentlest way to discourage people from stealing pens.

We have two beautiful tarps for tarp toss, which was made by staff from last year. This year I got to present it. Like a gigantic target board. |Somebody suggested that for Wacky Water Week, the Program Leaders put their face through the bulls eye and have people try to hit them with water balloons. I've pitched this to the rest of the team,

We had a volunteer group go out to a community centre and help facilitate activities for children on Tuesday and Thursday. We got to make Froot Loops bracelets, construction paper puppets, build cities out of boxes, design a banner, and make melt bead art.

On Wednesday we went to the Family Centre, where we had a number of stations, including baking cookies, cleaning, visual art, pinwheel or benner making, and a musical piece. The musical piece we chose was Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Arguably the most daring choice stacked up against "Twinkle twinkle little star" and "Mary had a little lamb".

On Friday we went to the Moluntsberg Conservation Area, where we attended a Bird of Prey show, went to a petting zoo, and had access to an all-purpose fun zone.

We got to see another camp use teal-green for their shirt colour before we saw anyone else use pylon-orange. This validated my suggestion t o change the shirt colours. We had another group have a number of counselors have differing shirt colours depending on who was in their small group, including Pylon-orange, but it didn't catch on. It was a fantastically hot day though. Somehow a group coaxed me into being the only staff to play Manhunt in their adult-sized playground.

Around The World 3

So last week was my third trip Around The World at the Summer Program, which kicks off with a themed week on traveling.

Pretty traditional. We had a reptile show, where someone came in and we got to look at, and often touch, some pretty interesting creatures including a tarantula, a tortoise, a caman, multiple lizards, several snakes, and a giant toad (we didn't touch the toad).

We've done this routine the previous two years. Many participants and several staff were too uneasy to pet the animals, and most people who did still needed to pluck up their courage to do so. It's funny, I'm afraid of A LOT of things. I'm afraid of heights, small spaces, water where you can't see the bottom, etc. but I don't think any kind of animal, including insects and reptiles has ever bothered me.

This year, after hearing my name, later on the presenter accidentally called me "Phoenix". This was cool because when I first ran the "What's In A Name" icebreaker activity during training, I said that if I had to change my name, I'd just change it to another mythical creature, "such as 'Dragon' or 'Phoenix'". Since then I've been occasionally called "Dragon" by the rest of the staff, and getting called "Phoenix" was a sweet callback to my other proposed alternative name.

It also showed he knew the mythology behind my name, and made the mistake based on that context, instead of a name that sounds similar, such as "Griffith" or suchlike.

Our Friday Day Trip was of course to African Lion Safari, which is beginning to feel like an annual tradition. I'm sure in years past I've spoken on the unfortunate vulture show, where they try to show how fast some slow, cheating vultures are on foot by challenging a bunch of kids to race them. The vultures always cheat by using their wings, the children always win regardless, and the announcer sometimes tries to swing it as a win for the vultures or a tie. This year the announcer properly admitted the vultures lost by a good margin. I really don't know why they've stuck to that routine since I was a kid and got cheated by the vultures myself.

This year Chuck, the smaller elephant, couldn't win a round of soccer against his trainer. First time I ever saw that.

At the I Choose Dignity Rally, somebody who had been to African Lion Safari at the camp two years ago asked me what the name of the brown cows with the horns was. Without thinking, I said "Watuzu Cattle". Several people seemed impressed at how I could pull out a name like that. At the actual safari, turns out the actual name is "Watuzi Cattle" but I was close enough that everyone just assumed I was right and I got credit for it.

Otherwise... My Personality Bingo got another makeover. The first icebreaker activity of the week is like my baby and is improved annually. First year, it was a "Personality Scavenger Hunt" where people had to find characteristics in each other that matched the corresponding questions. First person to fill the list wins. Next year, I put the questions on a grid and called it "Personality Bingo". This gave the added thrill of allowing people to shout "BINGO!", and gave me the freedom to shout new requirements, "ONE LINE!" "TWO LINES!" "FULL CARD!". Personality Bingo also had questions tailored to the theme of the week, so that the game wouldn't become redundant for people coming multiple weeks (although there had still been variety, since the group would always differ somewhat between weeks).

This year, we have graphics for the questions, which helps people who have difficulty reading, and we've got special, larger-than-average paper. Personality Bingo has never looked better!

We had a scavenger hunt where people tried to find matches of paper animal cutouts. We played "Four corners of the world" we invented our own islands.... All good stuff.

We needed a filler activity when things were moving ahead of schedule. I dug up a memory of a game where people were sorted into pairs, had to stand opposite of each other and complete shouted commands, meeting in the centre of the room and returning to their side afterwards. Staff didn't know what I was talking about, but asked me if I'd facilitate it. When I was presenting, I said "This is a super fun game, but I don't remember the name of it, so I'm calling it 'the Gryphon Game'" As I explained the rules, someone said "Oh, Huckle Buckle!"

It was Huckle Buckle. Smash hit.

So far everything has gone so smoothly. Even when things don't go according to plan, things just fall together. Reception has been really good this year. I need more pressure. I need more hardship. The Summer Program is supposed to push my limits and force me to rely on my team members, resulting in bonds that can never be replaced. This year kind of feels like I'm just clocking in, chatting with my coworkers, going out on the field, and just completely owning everything flawlessly.

Bus route is a drag, though. In previous years, our Day Program was held a 50 minute bus ride from student housing. This year, I'm living walking distance from the usual Day Program location, but they changed venues, and are now a 50 minute bus ride from my new place. How tragically poetic.

I have to get up so early, I've no way of having it together to make coffee before rushing out the door, and there's no nearby coffee shops at the location that I go. Thought I was going to be forced to break my caffein addiction. But the school has a keurig. Never used one before. When I asked the rest of the staff if using one was hard, the room was full of suppressed laughter. It's supposed to be easier than a drip coffee maker.

So now I know how to brew a K-Cup and my coffee needs are in place again. Hey, did you guys know that dark roast coffee has less caffeine than traditional? Somebody in our staff team that worked at Tim Horton's ruined Dark Roast for me, and made me revisit the idea that my caffeine addiction might be partly psychological.  I've been able to call out weak roasts in the past, but dark roast always did it for me. Of course it doesn't anymore. Placebo effect has been ruined.

Compromisers

We just finished our Summer Program training, and our first official week begins on Monday. Here's a picture of our Summer Program team.

Remember how I said that I moved to change the colour from green to orange? Yeah, well they came out a bit brighter than we were expecting. This is on me.

For our team building activity this year, instead of going to Chicopee and climbing on rock walls and vertical playgrounds, we did Adventure Rooms. This was fine by me, since first year Chicopee ruined me, which inspired me to train and challenge it again next year, doing much better. I felt I'd already got my revenge on Chicopee, and it was satisfying, but I don't need to do it again.

If you don't know what Adventure Rooms are, basically, you're locked in a room with a group of people with one hour to escape. Clues are set all around, and you have to figure out puzzles made with unorthodox equipment to escape. I can't describe what happened in there, because they discourage you from doing so, as it could ruin the experience for someone else.

At the end, they tell you what percentage you completed. We made it 55% of the way to escaping. Sounds bad, but only 20% of groups manage to escape. We were about average.

And then you're required to have your team photo taken, with your team name, and they post it on their Facebook page publicly.

Here's our team pic.

Caption reads, "The Compromisers solved their way through 55% of The Vault."

The reason our team name is The Compromisers, is because our team did a Conflict Resolution Styles test, and all but one ranked as Compromising. The one person who wasn't Compromising ranked Avoiding and she avoided the conflict by taking the name despite it not applying to her.

We've got someone pitching the name "Team Pylon" since the first group to have pylon-coloured shirts, but I don't think she's going to pitch it hard enough to replace "The Compromisers" since it's this established.

The five conflict mediation styles are as such:

Competing                                 Collaborating

Compromising

Avoiding                                   Accomodating 

We do this every year, so I may have mentioned it once or twice before. But the ones on the top are more aggressive, and the ones at the bottom are more passive. The ones on the left are "more about me" and the ones on the right are "more about you"

So Compromising seems like a good balance, but really, each conflict style is important and teams do best when there's a variety of different styles within them. Compromising is "We split the pie" style thinking. It means both parties get part of what they want, but neither gets everything. It's good for short-term solutions.

In my Personality Dimensions test (where people are ranked as Inquiring Green, Authentic Blue, Resourceful Orange, and Organized Gold) I came out as a perfect Green-Blue split! I'm sure I've said it before, but I started out as a hard Green (intellectual) with a distant secondary Blue (empathetic) but my Blue kept creeping up and up on me, until last year it overtook. Since I've always identified as Green, and since I was quite content as a Green-Blue split, which I'd had the year previous, I was worried that my empathetic self would only continue to grow, and my intellectual self continue to fade (which is appropriate for a Social Service Worker, I guess)

But this year I ranked that perfect Green-Blue balance again (I call it turquoise.)

 It means I'm the best at managing conflict, because I can see both sides of any argument, but I'm the worst for self-doubt because of my inner conflict (should I do what I think is right, or what I feel is right?)

I learned this year that while Green and Blue contrast each other, Gold and Orange contrast each other similarly. Green-Blue is Head vs. Heart, while Gold-Orange is Order vs. Chaos. Green-Gold, Green-Orange, Blue-Gold, and Blue-Orange don't have equivalent struggles.

 We did Love Languages too, but for professional environments. This test is for how we prefer to receive appreciation. For anyone who doesn't know, the five categories are Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Physical, Gift Giving, and Acts of Service. I ranked highest for Words of Affrimation. Usually everyone ranks Quality Time, which is why I find the test boring. This year we were split between Quality Time and Words of Affirmation.

My garden's wrecked. The weeds in the community garden are just so awful. My transplants are doing well (my tomatoes and impatiens) but I only have a few zuchini plants and snow peas, and my sunflowers are completely choked out. They aren't selling vegetable transplants, althought they are still selling flowers. So what am I supposed to do? Grow a flower garden? Amongst all the vegetable growers in the community garden, I'd feel like a rebel.

I'm not even mad. You want to know why? Every year, I've tried to prophesy the coming year based on how my garden did, specifically by my sunflowers. For example, one year, all my sunflowers in Guelph died while I was absent, but one grew in Kitchener, suddenly, and just after news of my other sunflowers fate. I interpreted this to mean "What you plan will fall apart, but you will receive unexpected good fortune in a place you hadn't considered" Yeah no, everything went according to plan that year. I also had a romantic story from my first sunflower, which I don't remember if I shared publicly, but it ended in a reverse outcome as well. And last year, I had seven sunflowers, which was supposed to mean seven fortunes, but instead I got seven hardships.

So I've developed a new theory that life is balanced, and if I experience misfortune in my garden, I will experience the opposite, good fortune in my day-to-day living, to maintain the balance. So this wretched year of gardening should equate to a great year for me!