It is hard to believe we left our homes one week ago today and we are half way through camp already. The theme for today's lesson was health; hand bells were introduced in music (which all the campers loved, even the older boys that try to show they are too cool to participate)and the craft was a "God's eye" weaving.
The words for today are flexibility and "it's a God thing". The morning started with sunshine so the plans were to do water balloons with the campers in the afternoon. At dinner time, the rain was coming down, so the plans were changed to do indoor activities. By the 13:30 activity time, God changed the weather again and the sun was shining, so sports were being relocated to the playground outside.
There happened to be a local in the park nearby playing with his grandson when he apparently collapsed, as his wife started to shout frantically. Obviously, Pastor James and Chris had no idea what she was screaming about, so they went to investigate and found her doing chest compressions. Chris took over for just two compressions and the gentleman started to arouse. Meanwhile a Polish counselor assisted the wife to call for the ambulance as some of the kids came running inside to get me to assist.
Be thankful for our response time as it took about 20 minutes for the ambulance to arrive while we monitored him. Had the camp not been going on, had the sports not been relocated the second time, one only wonders what would have happened to the gentleman who was later transported to the hospital. The paramedics were very efficient when they got here in evaluating the man from my perspective.
Our team has bonded so well that people just take over for one another in circumstances such as this to get the job done. The kids were reshuffled back inside for first period sports not knowing what would happen outside; the craft class was started without me; and the music and drama classes had no idea what was happening.
(As another aside, being the only nurse here, I am called upon to assist with other first aid issues. It is rather scary to be given a bag of bandages and other first aid items and be asked to treat an abrasion for instance. I have no clue what is in the spray bottles except that the name looks like it should be an antiseptic and the counselors said to clean the scraped knee with that. The 3x3's (in inches) that I am use to are now 5x5's (in cm)! At least there is some backup medical assistance if I am uncomfortable doing something.)
Dinner this noon was a traditional Friday meal of fried fish, mashed potatoes and coleslaw; the meal was very tasty. The campers are still having fun trying to teach me new words in Polish at the table. Supper was pasta with white cheese, bread and butter. Fortunately I took my jar of peanut butter with me. I became a new best friend to several campers at the table when they saw the jar. They raised their eyebrows when I put jelly on my bread with the PB, but then they have some food quirks as well that I might be skeptical about.
Evening plans had to be shuffled as well; we started to do an "Olympic" contest outside when a dark rain cloud came over the mountains and spoiled that. We were all sent inside and after a short period of songs, the contests for the seven classes were revamped to be done inside. The question remains which class won the Olympics.
Needless to say, we were all hungry by 9:30, so pizza was ordered from the nearby pizza place and was shared between the American and Polish staff. We had Hawaiian, meat lovers, vegetarian, and Mexican taco. The vegetarian was interesting as it had tomato, white asparagus, mushrooms, onion and CORN! There was not a crumb left in the boxes! Now the staff members are competing in the Jungle Speed game. I just hope they have all done their planning for tomorrow so they can get to bed early and get good night sleep. That's where I am headed right now. Good night!
Written by Jolene
No comments:
Post a Comment