Thoughts on CYC

CYC 2010

CYC 2010 was AWESOME!!

To talk about camp, I have to start from the beginning...

I started working on camp from the day that I received the camp director's email in March. I began recruiting for advisors almost immediately. Approximately 50 emails, Facebook messages, and phone calls later, I have a group of 6 experienced CYCers who are making themselves available for one week to be advisors at CYC. All six of us have at least 10 years of CYC experience, as camper, assistant counselor (AC), counselor, and some of us have also been head counselors and advisors before.

Before camp started, the six of us worked together to prepare all the contents for the counselor/AC training. During camp, we had advisor meetings every day to discuss lots of stuff. As the lead advisor, different and many people came to me for lots of things, lots of little detailed things. There were so many details....which group is missing a name tag, which child is homesick, did the ACs do laundry duty, etc. It was definitely a good work-out for my brain this last week.

This was all hard work. Before camp started, I spent many weekends working on what I can only call as "camp stuff" and thinking through all the little details that we would potentially face at camp. During camp, new situations arose every day, and we had to overcome them all. Rain, homesick children, child bitten by fire ants, sick counselor, etc. I slept four hours per day on average, and I pulled an all-nighter on the last night. And even now, I still have several post-camp tasks I have to complete.

But you know what? Despite the weekends spent working on "camp stuff", the 2.5 weeks of vacation time that I took, a $1700 plane ticket, the physical exhaustion, half-lost voice, and bruises on my sore legs, EVERYTHING was worth it when almost every camper I asked said they had fun and want to come back next year. I could not believe that approximately half of camp was crying on the last day, including little kids, big high school guys, and almost every single counselor and AC. Some guys were bawling like little kids. It was touching to say the least. All our hard work definitely paid off.

佑佑 (Chris), 凱凱 (Jerry), and 婷婷 (Stephanie), and I had a long discussion on the bus ride back. How come so many people cried after being together for just one week? One conclusion is intensity. CYC is a very intense one week experience. The campers spend one week living, eating, learning, and playing with others who are just like themselves in many ways. The bonds and friendships formed are the best part of camp. Even today, most of my best friends are still people I met at camp years ago.

Zooming in on group 4 - I had an awesome group. My counselors and ACs were great and also worked very hard throughout. And I loved my campers, who are all so cute and funny. I had campers tell me scary stories, a camper who made 餐蛋公仔麵 (spam & egg noodles) in arts & crafts, and it really just touched my heart when a camper told me on the last day that I am an inspirational person. I almost cried in the middle of the cafeteria right then and there. I loved my group.

I want to say a big thank-you to all the counselors and ACs. You guys did a wonderful job, and I am so proud of you all. Everything went smoothly, and it couldn't have happened without all of your hard work. Thank you!!

I also want to say a big thank-you to all the advisors. We did it. Thank you for volunteering your vacation time, and thank you for all the hard work. We were a very balanced team, and it was good working with you all. We had an awesome talent show!! And I want to give a special thank-you to Stephanie. Thank you for joining me in this cause the second that I informed you. It was great to have you on our team from day 1. I couldn't have done this without you.

And to any campers reading this, I love you all and want to see all of you come back next year!!

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