Hey everybody! It’s Meredith, writing to you from Jackson’s Mill. We made it here on Sunday afternoon and camp started out smoothly. We began with long lines of familiar faces and some new faces at registration. Then we went to an opening assembly where we met some staff members and went with our tribes to “Rotating Stations.” In these stations, we learned the camp song, talked about how we can get involved with the beautification of Jackson’s Mill, and the other two stations were getting to know each other activities.

Then we went to “The Journey” which is a special new Council Circle experience that we’ve started at State Camps. There, we talk about the four H’s and their importance. Each chief gives some brief history about their tribe and we all sang our tribal songs. After the Journey we continued with our normal council circle. One special thing that happens at Sunday night Council Circle is the recognition of the sagamores for each tribe. This year there seemed to be some confusion about the sagamores and now the
Mingo and Seneca Tribes both have two sags. But even though some people saw it as a problem, I can only think the more help, the better. Being chief’s next year will be a shared responsibility! After Council Circle, we all headed back to the Assembly Hall for some evening recreation and then back to our cabins for some well needed rest.

Monday morning we all woke up and went to breakfast-hey, that’s a good thing when you think about it! After that we went off to our morning classes. Classes are always one of my favorite parts of camp because you can always choose something that you like to do. The class that I am taking this year is Recreation.Mainly we just play a bunch of games and it’s tons of fun. This year they have made the option to make it that you can leave your class as long as you sign out to another class. I think this is a very good rule because sometimes you don’t always get what you had planned on. This way campers can change their mind without going around the rules. This way no one is facing the music for not being where they are suppose to be.

After classes, we had a LEO, Leisure Educational Opportunity. LEOs are really fun, because there is everything you could imagine to do. They even have a rest and relaxation class for everyone who is a little bit tired from the late nights and early mornings of the week. After LEO’s we went to Grow Groups. Grow Groups are something I talked about in my last blog. They are definitely a highlight of camp for me. The first day everyone is a little bit quiet but hopefully throughout the week everyone will open up more. After grow groups we continued the day with some free time to swim, nap, shower, or just hang out with friends. This was followed by tribal meetings, dinner, then to the Amphitheater for the Camp Picture.

After that we went up in front of Monongalia and had reflections.
We sang some songs and some campers read quotes that related to the day’s theme. Then they told us to go to the five tables behind us that each had different kinds of decorations on them and that we were to decorate our face. Just like in a circus where everyone has costumes and face paint, we were supposed to decorate ourselves in a way that represented us and the face that we wanted to put forward to the world. After we were all decorated in beads, face paint, stickers, jewels, feathers, and everything else, we got in a big circle holding hands then began a snake. We moved around so that everyone got to see everyone else and how they had fixed themselves up. It turned out to be a success. Wow, this was fun! We then went to Council Circle, evening recreation, and back to our cabins for the night. Monday was a great way to start off the week of Alpha II 2007.

Tuesday’s schedule was very similar to Monday’s so I won’t bore you with all that again. One thing that was different on Tuesday than Monday was that we had a speaker in the afternoon. The speaker was a woman named Franny King, who believe it or not is my Aunt. I thought her talk was wonderful. She was all dressed up like a clown with a hilariously bright costume that she crafted and brought along all these different props and all. She was very interactive with her speech, actually with each and every camper. On each seat there was a pencil and three post-it notes. We wrote our name on each of them and traded them with a first year camper to have breakfast, lunch, or dinner with them the following day. So we had time to meet someone, talk to them and learn how to participate in a conversation in real life and not just on FaceBook. I thought it was a very great idea since a lot of first year campers don’t really get to know any one
other than their age. Franny’s talk was about how Alpha II was the greatest camp on Earth to her and the main points to focus on in order to make it the greatest camp for you. I was very happy that she came and talked because I’m sure that it made a difference, especially with the younger campers since some of them are a little reluctant or don’t know how to get involved. I hope that each and every camper listened to her words of advice and took them to heart. I know that I surely did.

Well everyone, that’s Sunday through Tuesday for you. I will get back to youwith more later in the week. I’m having a wonderful week so far and I hope that it continues this way. If you’re not here this year, I hope to see your face and smile at camp next year! Bye everyone! ? Meredith –