Feeling The Heat at Camp.
After much delay, I finally have a chance to tell you how camp went. I was staff at Junior High Camp for my church and was program staff in charge of all the audio-video stuff there. The term "program staff" means that I wasn't a counselor with a cabin.
So to elaborate on what I actually did: For each of the main activities that were in the Tabernacle, an open-sided sanctuary building, I ran the sound and displayed slides and videos. Outside of that, I went around camp videotaping activities for playback in little recap videos (called CD-TV) and taught a couple of classes. One was a CD-TV class where campers created a couple of fake news broadcasts. The other class was called "Christian Perspectives" and included discussion of real life stuff and how to apply our faith to it.
One of the things we watched in Christian Perspectives was Rob Bell's NOOMA videos. They're each about 12-14 minute mini sermons and do a really good job making God a little more real in our everyday lives.
When we ran out of things to talk about regarding the videos, I had to come up with something to fill the time. What came to mind? How about the Telephone Game. You've probably played this before. Someone starts a sentence on one end of a line of people and each person whispers that phrase to the next. The goal is to get the exact same sentence to the other end, but usually it gets messed up somewhere in the middle. While the first sentence was going down the line, I had a thought about gossip. Yes! What a great analogy! After we were done I told the kids how the Telephone Game is like how gossip spreads. We may pass along something that seems innocuous -- I didn't actually use the word innocuous -- but then gets messed up as it goes from person to person. After a while it just goes wrong and ends up being untrue. The reaction of "Ohhh, yeah, I never thought about it that way before," was priceless.
In my other class, CD-TV, we started off by brainstorming on what we could produce that week. One lovely youngster pointed out that she thinks I look like Jared, the Subway guy. Everyone else agreed. I have to say, that was a first! Never, um, EVER heard that I look like the Subway guy. :-\ Anyway, we ended up doing two news broadcasts during the week. Stories involved the "Snake Whisperer" being lost in the woods, a blind dodgeball player, and a synchronized swimmer who can't swim or tread water. In our fake weather report, the weather guy went outside, and between cutaway shots to the anchor desk, began sweating profusely. When the shot returned to him he was absolutely drenched in "sweat."
It WAS really hot that week. We discovered that above a certain temperature and humidity, our bodies begin perspiring from really...odd places. 'Nuff said.
It's noteworthy to tell you that Dutch chocolate is apparently so good that, at least one Dutch person, thinks Hershey's tastes like "vomit." One of our staff members, Annette, shared with us her distaste for the good ol' American milk chocolate. She said that Dutch chocolate is sweeter and has a much better flavor. While I didn't get to try any, I got the impression that it's more like our dark chocolates. Yeah, I'm not a fan of those.
To save the most newsworthy item from camp the last, my amazingly fast Power Mac G5 flipped out for some reason while I was there. It wouldn't mount external drives, recognize most USB devices, or regulate its fans correctly. I tried all the standard troubleshooting techniques to no avail, so I ended up having to use my Powerbook to do all my video editing from then on. It looked like the Power Mac might have a bad logic board. Long story shorter, I was relieved when it was simply a problem with the operating system. After an archive and re-install, it's back to normal. I'm using it to type this! I'm just disappointed that I wasn't able to use it for most of my editing at camp. It's a much more preferable editing machine since it's twice as fast as my Powerbook.
Overall I had a good time at camp. It WAS quite relaxing. The campground itself is inherently soothing. Being in such a positive environment was a big plus as well. Now back to the real world.
So to elaborate on what I actually did: For each of the main activities that were in the Tabernacle, an open-sided sanctuary building, I ran the sound and displayed slides and videos. Outside of that, I went around camp videotaping activities for playback in little recap videos (called CD-TV) and taught a couple of classes. One was a CD-TV class where campers created a couple of fake news broadcasts. The other class was called "Christian Perspectives" and included discussion of real life stuff and how to apply our faith to it.
One of the things we watched in Christian Perspectives was Rob Bell's NOOMA videos. They're each about 12-14 minute mini sermons and do a really good job making God a little more real in our everyday lives.
When we ran out of things to talk about regarding the videos, I had to come up with something to fill the time. What came to mind? How about the Telephone Game. You've probably played this before. Someone starts a sentence on one end of a line of people and each person whispers that phrase to the next. The goal is to get the exact same sentence to the other end, but usually it gets messed up somewhere in the middle. While the first sentence was going down the line, I had a thought about gossip. Yes! What a great analogy! After we were done I told the kids how the Telephone Game is like how gossip spreads. We may pass along something that seems innocuous -- I didn't actually use the word innocuous -- but then gets messed up as it goes from person to person. After a while it just goes wrong and ends up being untrue. The reaction of "Ohhh, yeah, I never thought about it that way before," was priceless.
In my other class, CD-TV, we started off by brainstorming on what we could produce that week. One lovely youngster pointed out that she thinks I look like Jared, the Subway guy. Everyone else agreed. I have to say, that was a first! Never, um, EVER heard that I look like the Subway guy. :-\ Anyway, we ended up doing two news broadcasts during the week. Stories involved the "Snake Whisperer" being lost in the woods, a blind dodgeball player, and a synchronized swimmer who can't swim or tread water. In our fake weather report, the weather guy went outside, and between cutaway shots to the anchor desk, began sweating profusely. When the shot returned to him he was absolutely drenched in "sweat."It WAS really hot that week. We discovered that above a certain temperature and humidity, our bodies begin perspiring from really...odd places. 'Nuff said.
It's noteworthy to tell you that Dutch chocolate is apparently so good that, at least one Dutch person, thinks Hershey's tastes like "vomit." One of our staff members, Annette, shared with us her distaste for the good ol' American milk chocolate. She said that Dutch chocolate is sweeter and has a much better flavor. While I didn't get to try any, I got the impression that it's more like our dark chocolates. Yeah, I'm not a fan of those.
To save the most newsworthy item from camp the last, my amazingly fast Power Mac G5 flipped out for some reason while I was there. It wouldn't mount external drives, recognize most USB devices, or regulate its fans correctly. I tried all the standard troubleshooting techniques to no avail, so I ended up having to use my Powerbook to do all my video editing from then on. It looked like the Power Mac might have a bad logic board. Long story shorter, I was relieved when it was simply a problem with the operating system. After an archive and re-install, it's back to normal. I'm using it to type this! I'm just disappointed that I wasn't able to use it for most of my editing at camp. It's a much more preferable editing machine since it's twice as fast as my Powerbook.
Overall I had a good time at camp. It WAS quite relaxing. The campground itself is inherently soothing. Being in such a positive environment was a big plus as well. Now back to the real world.
posted by Michael Buttgen - The "Barefoot Voice" at
21:17
|
1 comments
