2016 Teen Leader Orientation

So, it's been awhile... No blog entries since the end of the camp last summer. But, that certainly doesn't mean that there hasn't been a lot going on. It just means that once school started blogging fell down towards the bottom of my 'things to do' list just above 'recaulking our shower' (which I still haven't done).  In any event, here's a quick update to get all twenty of you followers up to speed.

•  Many of the teen leaders (both Dominican and Gringo) expressed interest in working at the camp again so we decided to break with the tradition of running the camp every other summer and run it again this summer. At first I didn't love this idea since we like to use our non-DR summers to take our kids on other adventures and as Evan approaches his college years, those opportunities seem to be dwindling rapidly. But, when the teenagers spoke so passionately about returning I figured I should get on board (Then of course we ended up using the kids' February break to go skiing out west and then their April break to go even further out west, thus using up all of our vacation resources anyways.)

•  We weren't sure we had enough funds to run the camp so in the Fall we held a fundraising/ information event at a friends house and were awed at the number of people who showed up and contributed to the foundation, thus giving us enough money to be able to run the camp.  Wahoo!!!

• We then set about choosing the teen leaders for the camp. Last year we just gathered the teens by word of mouth basically and let everyone go who showed interest. But this year we wanted to make the process more formal - especially because we knew of at least 15 teenagers that wanted to go with us and we only had space for 10 (it always comes down to math am I right?)  So Tanya did a lot of research (she's the best, aint she?) about similar programs and created an application that the teenagers needed to fill out -- even including a statement of interest and a letter of recommendation. All told we got about applications and ended up accepting eleven of them. Seven return from last year with four newbies.

•  So, we had our Spring orientation meeting with the teen leaders and their families yesterday. The  Ribatt's were kind enough to host the event and it went off beautifully (at least in my humble opinion).  We wanted to explain the goals of the camp to the teenagers (especially the new ones), have the returning leaders share a bit about their experiences last summer, and, I think most importantly, provide an opportunity for the teen leaders to get to know one another.  Funny story ... there are two new teen leaders from Cambridge Rindge and Latin, who are in the same homeroom and didn't realize until Friday that they were both going to the camp.  In any event, turns out it didn't take the kids long to bond:


So, that's where we are.  (I just realized that I use the word 'so' a lot when I write. I'll have to work on that). Tanya and I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the camp better (mostly just listening to the suggestions of the teen leaders) and there will be some changes. But, this post is getting too long so I'll save those ideas for another day. Hasta pronto!