My greyhound arrived into Wimslow, Maine at 9pm and I was picked by Alex Rottmen and driven the short journey to camp. The first evening consisted of meet and greets and an early night after being assigned a bunk for orientation. We had 9 days of orientation before the kids were going to arrive. During this time we had countless talks and lectures from all the directors and other speeches about what it takes to be a great councillor. The highlight was a 3 hour workout with David Jack, voted one of the top 50 trainers, where along with working us extremely hard pushing vans for 2 miles for example he taught us exercises and systems to help coach kids.
Throughout the 9 days I had 2 nights out drinking being very careful not to exceed the drinking limits on camp. Although many people were but luckily everyone got away with it. Also there was a few trips to the famous Walmart! A massive supermarket which claims to sell everything, this includes a healthy selection of semi- automatic rifles just chilling near the back of the store!
We had one day off during the 9 days so a group of about 20 headed to the golf course for a round of 18 on the house all paid for by camp including buggies! There was perfect numbers of Europeans to Americans so we did a Ryder Cup type match. Europeans won convincingly ( I played pretty well, finishing joint second overall drawing with one of the golf coaches). The forfeit for losing is having to wear a dress of the next weekly camp fire so looming forward to seeing that!
The first full day was my birthday so in the evening I had to take part in the birthday tradition of skipping around the tables and then getting thrown into the air 22 times while getting hit by a broom on every throw! Certainly a birthday I won't forget!