May 26th

I had a great week at camp! I had originally thought that I was going to be a counselor for the camp, however I just ended up being on "staff" - which basically just allowed me to wonder around for group to group most of the time. I helped out with some of the games, but that wasabout the extent to which I was on "staff." But that was okay with me, because then I was able to go around and meet more kids and spend time with them. The majority of the kids were in high school and college, but there were a few younger kids around 10 and 12. And even though a lot of them were in college, they were younger than what we might typically think of as college age. Many schools here, from the sounds of it, don't have what we consider 7th and 8th grade - so it is not uncommon for a first year college student to be around the age of 16. There were around 50-60 kids, from churches in this area and in the Manilla area.
The first two days of camp were at Bethel - the church I have been going to - and on the 3rd morning we packed up and headed about an hour away to a Christian owned beach resort. It wasn't what you would think when we typically use the term resort, but it was still a nice place. Most of us actually never swam in the sea, there were too many jellyfish, but there was a pool that we spent a good amount of time in.
The structure of the camp was very similar to what I am used to with camps i've been to in the past. Speaker sessions in the morning and evening, games and free time in the afternoon. We were up every morning at 5:00 for a 5:30 devotion, and even though the scheduled lights out time was 10:00, we weren't done with planned activities until 11 or 12 most nights - haha! So very little sleep these past few nights. The one night we spent at the beach, I ended up only sleeping for an hour and a half. Much of the group was up until 1:30 or so, but I decided to sleep under a kubo (pavillion), on a bench. I thought it would fun to sleep outside - it was a better thought than it was in reality - the mosquitos, heat, and hard bench kept me up most of night. I can't complain though, because I was warned about all of those things prior to. Thanks to God though I had enough energy to make it through the day with that little of sleep, and no nap in the afternoon.
The kids all seemed to like the speaker - for the most part I didn't understand his lessons - he used some English, and the bible verses were in english, and with the Tagalog I know I was able to get the idea of each lesson, but not a lot of the details. My favorite part, as o it is has with most places I go here, was just getting to know the people and spending time with them. For the most part I bank on their knowledge of English in order to have an actual conversation, but in passing and in quick questions I would practice my Tagalog.
In my next post, maybe tomorrow night, I will talk about some more specific details and experiences of the week. I didn't take any pictures, but I will try to track some down from other people, and hopefully I can add those in the next post as well!