It's me

(58) Ukuleles and Summer Camp

Hey!

It's been a while.

*****

First off, thank you, Zoe, for hacking my wattpad, I wondered who changed my profile picture.

I changed it back, thank you very much.

Nah I'm kidding Zoe's really cool and awesome and mentioning this first is a really good transition because

ZOE GOT ME HOOKED ON UKULELE!

See? Great segue. (That word is segway like transition or those things you stand on and ride around on and I know it doesn't look like it would be spelled that way but it is and it weirded me out when I learned that so that's why I'm telling you now and this is a horrible run on sentence and the longest parenthesis thingy I've ever done so I'm done now okay)

So a few weeks ago I was over at Zoe's house because she is my bae,

And she has a ukulele.

And I had never played ukulele.

And so she showed me how to play Riptide by Vance Joy.

And the next week I was going to camp (more on that in a moment) and I wanted a ukulele to have cheesy camp moments with and sing around the campfire and stuff.

My granddad has a ukulele because he mentioned he wanted to learn a while ago so my grandma got him one for Christmas.

So he gave that to me.

Now I have a ukulele, it's been broken twice and it's TARDIS blue and beautiful and I love it and I have like 15 songs written in my book that I carry everywhere I bring the ukulele and I have, like, another 15 in my tabs.

So now I'm obsessed.

Thank you, Zoe.

Now, camp.

So I went to the YWCA camp Hochelaga in South Hero, VT on the border of Lake Champlain.

It was bad and great.

So first off the campers are split up into groups called "Lower/Upper Middlers" and "Seniors"

It's all based on age.

Anyway the Senior bathroom is DISGUSTING.

There was a sink lined with dead bugs. No lie.

The nights were awful what with the occasional homesickness and constant mosquito attacks.

(TIP: If you don't have mosquito netting, bring a fitted sheet. Use it like a regular sheet. only I suggest you put it over your head [this is sleeping on your side btw don't suffocate yourself]. The way it tucks in already sort of acts like mosquito netting, and there will rarely be mosquitoes buzzing in your ears while you sleep.)

And sometimes the counselors seemed to be kind of snappy.

EXAMPLE: There's a rule on the steps down to the waterfront that you stay on the left side of the stairs so that there's a path clear in case of an emergency. One time during free swim, a girl was a bit late getting to the water because she had to get her suit on. Now, before they let you go down to the water itself, you have to sit on the stairs. Left side, remember. Now, this girl was walking on the right side because when everyone got up to go to the water, the left there stuff there. On the left side. So she couldn't walk there. She was almost to the water when a counselor goes "Stay to the left." And I'm just standing there in the water thinking to myself, "This girl was not event two feet from the bottom of the stairs. That's about two seconds. She can't walk on the other side of the steps because of all the junk in the way and nothing is going to happen in less than two seconds that she will be in the way of. And even if something does happen and you need to rush up and leave, by the time you get the message, understand it, and rush off to get where you need to be, she'll be off the left side of the stairs."

So I kind of ranted to myself for a few moments.

Anyway, camp was fun, the food was really good and I did have a cliche camp moment with my ukulele.

It was before evening program was going to start and it was the last night at camp. I was trying to teach Lettie, one of the counselors, how to play Riptide on the ukulele, it being the first song I learned. So she was doing pretty good and then she went off to check something so I just sat there in front of her tent (counselors slept in tents, campers in cabins) and played a bit, singing to myself. Then another counselor comes over and she knows the song and starts singing along (she's tone deaf) and then a few campers came over to listen. I ended up playing some songs she didn't know and then my friend Anna came over (she went to camp with me) and she started harmonising with me on a song and it sounded really good and the other campers were telling us that we should go on the Voice and we're like "nah, we're good but thank you."

That was my cliche camp story.

There was also a Doctor Who class where LARPed and went around with tally marks on our arm and told unsuspecting people that the silence are coming and that silence will fall.

It was great.

So yeah