Pre-Camp

I arrived safely in Vermont after 15 hours of travel - a car ride to London Heathrow, an Airbus to Frankfurt, a Boeing to Boston, and a four hour van ride through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont to camp. It was an incredibly long journey, but it was made easier by the two girls I met, Rianne (camp name: London) and Kirsty (camp name: Tink) - we quickly became friends and helped each other through the journey and the subsequent crushing despair on our first night. I also met two other English girls a couple of days later, Smiley and Starry, who are also good friends of mine here. My camp name is Pepper. I have since met loads of really nice, friendly people.

The weather here is ridiculously sunny and warm, but it's very humid and prone to storms. Predictably, I'm sunburnt already. As well as the beautiful weather, the food here is amazing - because we're not allowed artificial flavours or colours in England, all the synthetic goodness in America has been great!

Some highlights from pre-camp include:

• Random people in Walmart loving our accents
• Indi teaching us how to make ice cream from scratch
• Swimming in the lake
• Learning how to make friendship bracelets, and loads of camp songs
• Getting good at swiping spiders out of tents
• The staff overnight - we put up tents in a rainstorm, but made an excellent campfire under the unit shelter and cooked a really nice dinner on it. Sunny radioed the office saying, "A tree has fallen down, there's a fire in the unit shelter, and we've lost our Socks." ('socks' has grammatical status as she is in fact one of the other counsellors here). Later, when the rain was worse, Dappy used my phone torch, which has an SOS feature, to flash over to the unit shelter for the rest of the staff to save us. We soon splashed through the swamp that the campsite had become and curled up next to the fire for a while. Unfortunately Sunny got really sick, and we had to be rescued by Cookie in a pick-up truck. That was bizarre - sitting in the back of a pick-up truck in the middle of the night as the rain hammered down, driving up a huge hill with hairpin bends.
• Funfest - We had a few groups of Girl Scouts at camp for the night, and Tink, London and I organised a drama game activity for some of them to sign up to. We got a full class, and the kids were really into it and seemed to really enjoy themselves. We were so pleased with ourselves! Also, I got two gifts from two of the campers and that was a lovely ego boost.
• The staff having a movie night in the Ev (main building at camp). We watched Pitch Perfect and it was fun because we were all sprawled out with snacks and sleeping bags:

• Getting qualified in First Aid and CPR with the American Red Cross. I was so pleased with myself.
• I also became a member of the American Girl Scouts, which is bizarre.

For the next fortnight, I'm going to have a horse-riding program, and two travel programs. I'm pretty excited for it, but nervous. I am going to attempt to do weekly round ups of highlights, but I'm not making any promises as I am a shoddy, shoddy blogger. I'm also documenting funny quotes from people, and I might put them up at some point, if I can make a substantial post out of them. For now though, I'm going to go and be jittery about the girls arriving TOMORROW. Eeeeek!

London-Frankfurt-Boston-Vermont

I finally got my placement yesterday! I was contacted by Camp Farnsworth in Vermont, asking if I was available for a Skype interview, and they accepted me shortly after, asking if I was able to come to them on Thursday. I will be a 'unit leader' - looking after the girls at the camp and getting to experience all of the activities, instead of just specialising in one.

Since having my placement confirmed, I've just been in a mad dash trying to sort everything out, and I think I've done pretty well so far. I've sorted my flights - I fly from Heathrow at 8:30am on Thursday, which is gross, but I touch down for an hour and a half in Frankfurt before carrying on to Boston. YIS GERMANY. From the airport at Boston, I will be picked up by camp staff, as camp is about a three hour drive away. I've had a little look at where it is and it's literally in the middle of nowhere; it looks gorgeous and I'm so excited to get there and get stuck in!

I'm slowly but surely sorting everything out, but it still feels like I have a million other things that need to be done. I guess I'm just stressing because I've never travelled out of country on my own before. And it’s not like I'm just skipping across the English Channel to France - I'm going halfway around the world to work in the United States.

I am at camp in Vermont until August 20th, then I'm going on an adventure to New York until August 27th. I've already had a look at hotels and travel from Boston, and I'm compiling a list of things I want to pack into the six full days I'll be spending in NYC. Obviously nothing is set in stone until I know what my finances are like after camp. On August 27th, I fly back to Heathrow (hopefully from JFK airport!), again with a short stop in Frankfurt.

I am so ridiculously excited and nervous, and feeling ill over the fact I will have minimal/no internet for the next couple of months, but looking forward to all the fun and new experiences I will have. I can't believe I'm actually going to America in less than 48 hours, it's all happened so fast!