steal your heart away

So I'm sure you're all wondering just what exactly my internship here consists of. Well, my after school program (Camp Grace!) is located in north Camden and I work there with 3 other people I live with. We also have an intern director and 4 or 5 "street leaders", who are Camden highschool students employed by Urban to help out at the different programs. Everyone I work with is awesome. The street leaders are all 11th/12th graders and are hilarious. When we have opening program at camp, they can often be seen doing crazy skits, or dancing while dressed in ridiculous clothing. I think all of the interns find them just as entertaining as the kids.

The kids at Grace are great. I heard so many stories about how “Grace kids” are the trouble makers, and how out of all of the camps that they are the toughest to deal with. That being said, I went to camp the first day with some apprehension, but I have grown to love all of the kids over the past few weeks. There have been a total of 31 5^th and 6^th graders and about 10 7^th and 8^th graders who have come to camp since it started, so it hasn’t been without its hectic “I want to pull my hair out” moments. But for the most part it's been a great experience. Their favorite game when they arrive is "come on over", where they have to run from one wall to the other without being tagged. No matter what new games we try to play we always resort to it. And they love opening program, where we have am ongoing competition between the boys and the girls while we watch skits, play games, and sing camp songs. We also have snack, homework time, and a final activity (art project, science project, etc)- there's a lot to pack in to 2 1/2 hours!

Another thing I do during the week is 2 hours of community service on Tuesday mornings. There's about 6 of us who are currently working on a mosaic mural in south Camden. I've been working on the tree that you can see on the right side of the bottom picture. Across the tree it says "art will save us". Let me tell you, it's not easy to try and find tiny tile pieces to fit around the words, but doing the mural is kind of therapeutic. Plus, I cannot tell you how many people walk/drive by and complement it while we're working. Everyone who lives there is so appreciative in the initiative in trying to rebuild south Camden...one building at a time.

There's also lots of other things that I have to do throughout the week, but most of it isn't as exciting, and I'm sure you'll hear about it at some point anyway. Sadly I've lost my camera charger (thus the not-so-good phone pictures above), but when I get a new charger, I'll make sure to put up lots of pictures of camp kids and all my exciting adventures. So stay tuned :)