It has been another beautiful day here at Camp Taiwan. We have had mostly blue skies all day long and not a hint of rain at this point, although we see there is some to the south of us on the radar. Hopefully, our good luck with the weather will hold through the evening.
We had a full day of activities today. The teams had the following activities:
Red Team: Crafts, river tracing, and ecology
Orange Team: sports, crafts, river tracing
Green Team: Giant swing, sports, crafts
Light Blue Team: Ecology, Giant swing, and sports
Purple team: Archery, zipline, and giant ladder
A couple of these activities require further explanation. First of all, our craft this week is something called "Shrinky-dinks." A piece of plastic film, similar to that used for laminating is rubbed with a piece of sandpaper until it can be written on with permanent marker. Campers then draw whatever design they wish on the plastic sheeting. When they are finished, the plastic is heated in an oven, which causes it to shrink down to a hard piece of plastic about 1/6 the size of the original.
For sports, we play pillow polo. This game is similar to field hockey, but the sticks are padded and a large foam ball is used. We try to choose sports that are not commonly played in Taiwan, so that everyone is starting at the same level.
Our fourth period today was something we call tent time. This is a time when counselors are free to choose (or invent) an activity that suits their specific group of campers. They can also do activities in smaller tent groups instead of color teams, which gives them a chance to get to know each other better. Sometimes 2 tents from different color teams play a game together, which allows the campers to interact with a larger range of people. Some of the girls on the red and light blue teams painted fingernails, (including most of the male counselors'), some of the campers played ping pong, and some got out the slip-n-slide.
This evening, we will have an outdoor night game. These are a lot of fun as they involve the entire camp at one time.
That is it for now. Here is the link to today's photos.