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…Back again for a third summer at Camp Augusta; many of you will know me as Looby, Oak 3 Counselor. Now, at the ripe old age of 24, I’m back with vengeance and a bunch of awesome stories to tell you all about my last 6 months travelling around New Zealand!
I’m originally from the UK, and since 2006, I’ve been working at Camp Augusta and travelling in between as much as I can, fulfilling my passion for travelling whilst I have the freedom and vitality to do so. As yet, I haven’t got bored of travelling and I love more and more the feeling of carrying everything I need on my back; I’m sure I’ll never lose my desire to see a different and unique part of the world I haven’t yet experienced, and I hope in the future I can create a lifestyle which will allow me to keep exploring.
Camp will be slightly different for me this year – most of the time you will see me pottering around Oak 3, a place I like to call “home,” but during sessions 4 and 5, I am honored to be heading up the CIRCLE program with my fellow Brit, Jim. We’re both horrendously excited about this new opportunity and are itching for the CIRCLEers to arrive and see the fun we have in store for them!!!
My passions are numerous, but I have an exploding desire to work with Children and be an inspiring entity in their lives. Growing up in an English town, I feel I missed out on much of my childhood and lived with the increasing pressures to grow up too fast. Well, now I’m at Augusta and I feel privileged to have the opportunity to not only show campers that it’s OK to be young and silly, I also get to act crazy and silly and work with an incredible bunch of staff who love nothing more than to throw oatmeal at each other! Where else in the world can you do that?!
Like I said before, I love to travel, but I also love to live simply. Since camp last summer, I have lived in a tent, in a different location every other night and cooked meals using limited utensils over a camp stove and lived out some of my absolute dreams. I’ll start quickly by telling you what a beautiful country New Zealand is – it’s kind of like California, but the grass is greener and there are far less people (and more sheep!) around. The sun was shining for almost 6 months non-stop, which was great for me because my tent wasn’t the sturdiest in the world and I think it may have lost a battle with a storm… Well, I went whale watching, caving and abseiling, tried eating huhu grubs and snails, saw some steaming hot (and very smelly) volcanoes and hot pools and even hiked across numerous volcanoes, some of which erupted within the last couple of hundred years. I really stretched myself to my limits and hiked two 3-day hikes, the Kepler and the Routeburn tracks, sometimes walking up to 32km a day with a full backpack on – phew! I worked probably one of the most unique jobs so far in my life whilst I was there – picking apples on an orchard for sometimes 10 hours a day! Oh and I got to meet a few Kiwi’s, not in the wild unfortunately, but under breeding programs; they were one of the coolest animals I’ve ever seen. But what do you think might have been the scariest, yet most fun, death-defying and vertically-horrific things I might have done in New Zealand???............
.....................You can ask me that when you get to camp! Hehe.
So, “where next?” you might ask. I’m not at all sure, and I’m more than OK with that I’m on a mission in life to gain as many experiences as I can and I then use it to the best of my ability and start my own business. With a degree in Business and Marketing, a Certification in Insurance and a licence to practice Reflexology, I’m building on those foundations as much as I can, and I firmly believe that life experiences are equally as important as those in a classroom. I’d still like to travel in Australia, Thailand and India….maybe if you’ve been to any of those places you can tell me about some wicked things to do there.
One of my other major achievements of this year, which I’m still working on, is FINALLY getting through reading Harry Potter. I send apologies to all of those who were shocked that a British person hadn’t read Harry Potter and I can gladly agree with all of you that they are fantastic books! I’m officially hooked. So if you can’t find me at any point during the summer, check out the pagoda as I’ll probably be hiding there with a cup of tea and my head in a book the size of a house brick…
I hope to be seeing all of you this summer in all manner of activities at camp. I’m always so anxiously excitable about getting out to camp and trying out all of the new things for the summer and I’ve heard great things from those who have been at camp over the winter (yes apparently there are people at camp over the winter – how strange is that?!) about a chicken coop, a pagoda, some new canoes, and even a brand-spanking-new Climbing Wall!!! I’ve also heard whispers about a new style Giants Swing….so shhhhh don’t tell anyone!
Yes, it’s true, I am just a big kid (even though most of the Oak 3 girls, and even Manzi 3 girls, are bigger than me…) but I have an enormous amount of determination for this coming summer to be the best yet! For all those new campers - who I can’t wait to meet - all those familiar faces, and especially the hard-working CIRCLE participants who I have enormous respect for with the effort they’ve put into camp already this year….it’s going to be a stonking good one this year!
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