Summer Camps Build Character

Hello everyone!

I'm going to begin by apologizing for the length of this journal. I won't have near as much time to write tomorrow because I have a swim meet, so I'm making up for that. Secondly, I'll apologize for the title of my post. This is a conservatory, not a summer camp and I should not equate the two in any way because, well, that's just belittling of me. But in any case, I have a story and for the sake of it we'll imagine the words are synonymous. When I was younger, my parents would send me to different summer camps, and I have this crackpot theory that summer camps build character.

For instance, let's refer to my experience at Art Camp when I was nine years old. We got notebooks to sketch in. They had nice white pages and an even nicer plastic binding. On the second day I put my sketch book into the back window of our car while we went into Target. I returned to find the plastic had melted. Hooray. It took me two days to get up the courage to go and ask for a new notebook, and the answer I got was that there was only one notebook per student provided. Bummer, but I definitely learned how to ask questions.

As for this conservatory, I had a great first day. I really enjoyed warming up because it was like a combination of my high school drama warm up and Ian Finley's warm up. It took a lot of concentration and I actually had to work at it, when during my high school warm up I can basically zone out and still do it. Especially challenging for me was the Sixth Shiek's Sick Sixth Sheep's Sick, because we have that in a different order at my school (The Sixth Shiek's Sick Sixth Sick Sheep) and I had to deprogram myself from that. That was without a doubt the hardest part of the warm up.

Next the games- I really enjoyed the power game. It was interesting to watch how colors and shapes changed the dynamic. I kept waiting for someone to just open up the binder and put it around the red water bottle, because that would cover the bottle completely, and it takes up more space when it's bigger, but that didn't happen. Nonetheless, because it didn't happen a lot of other things happened that were really cool, such as the chair getting turned upside down. I can't say the same for the touching people game, which was difficult. There was a lot of people in the room, and at one point I stepped into the middle of the group and was ambushed, which was a little frightening, I have to say.

The seaweed game was hard because I had a hard time not falling over, but I found enjoyment in it at any rate. I really liked the puppet and the clay game because Chloe and I enjoyed making ridiculous faces and impossibly poses for each other. The mirror was interesting and I think the only part of that I didn't enjoy was the ugly part- I thought that was really difficult to do. The Richard III rehearsal was great for a couple of reason. I really learned a lot about Shakespeare and each character. It was so much clearer reading it with this group than just reading through it as I had before. I think Shakespeare should really be taught like this in every case. I reinforce Ian Finley today!

I had a great time and can't wait for tomorrow. =]

-Julia Lukacs