Deutschland Round Two! : First Half of Week 2!

July 28th-30th

So far this week has been rather stressful, but today (Wednesday) was much better! The thing with the British Garrisons is we have mostly new kids each week and some returning throughout the summer. This week, we do have mostly new kids because the others are on holiday with their families. This makes it difficult for a few reasons…we have to form new bonds, learn new personalities, re-establish the rules, and help them adapt. It is nice, however, to have the few kids that returned from last week though! Most of them are 9 and 10 years so they help us counselors out by setting an example for the little ones. One mother jokingly called her son "a proper shit" which made my day. You'd never hear that kind of honesty in America. What a wonderfully blunt delivery!

Tuesday was especially crazy because nothing went according to plan. First, our scheduled visit from the Police Officers never happened. They didn’t even call to cancel, which was a little frustrating with 45 anxious children and 6 sleep deprived counselors. Then it rained all day, so they couldn’t go outside. Correction…we tried the outside in the rain, but then 8-year-old Lauren slipped and face planted. Her mother arrived to pick her up and we were prepared to apologize and explain the situation, but instead were received by her mother’s laughter and “don’t worry about it” attitude. Such a relief! Lauren is such a trooper though! Her face was pretty scraped up too. Something else happened, but I honestly couldn't tell you what because I was so delusional the whole day. All I know was it created more problems during the day with an already rowdy bunch! I even fell asleep on my break for the whole 30 minutes!

I was very excited about today because I got to work with the kids one-on-one more! We did finger painting and we were having the best time and then Janise stopped by and was pissed. Basically what happened was Kimbriana (the girl with the crutches) went out of ratio by a lot at her free choice activity. We are usually out of ratio due to some unexpected circumstances and needed breaks. But I always tell the girls to limit their groups to a max of 12 kids. Also, it is an unspoken rule to not be on your phone, but apparently she was on it the whole time. The kids like to play football (soccer) just out back in this gated area. You have to be sure to keep the door open with a brick. Unfortunately, she wasn’t doing her job and three kids got out around the building. So guess who got in trouble? Me, the director. Our ratio for Camp is 1:12 and for AWS Paderborn it is 1:8, but with an injured staff and the necessity of breaks, we are usually out of ratio, but have never had a problem because most of my girls know to keep their phones away and keep their kids in check. Not gonna lie, I had to go up and whip the kids into shape. I had about half go inside that were just lolly gaggling and then shot a text to Steve asking to meet him after work. Again, Steve always has our backs 100% and insists that we have breaks and will try to compromise with Janise, who now wants to take our breaks away. She basically overrode me in front of all my girls, which made me feel undermined, especially since I took care of the situation. I can’t do my job with my hands tied behind my back.

Anyways…enough of that drama, today was a much better day and I’m excited to go in tomorrow! Hopefully the kids are well-behaved and the day goes smoothly. We also had the firefighters visit this week and the kids got to check out the fire truck and use the hose to knock a tennis ball off a cone. They loved it!

We busted out posters and programming after work for a few hours for Space Week next week so we can go to Labori tomorrow. Labori is a festival in Paderborn with a lot of German food, culture, and carnival rides. A couple of our girls went on Monday and said it was super fun, so we’re excited to go tomorrow!

That’s all for now! TTFN :)