By Laura To
Day 1
On Friday night, we met up at the Jefferson turf field and tossed our bags on the sideline. While waiting for the others to arrive, we talked about frisbee and how our days were.We piled our bags into the car and carpooled to Camp Long in West Seattle. We played card games and scattergories until dinner was ready. The cooking interns made mac n cheese, and garlic bread, which was delicious!
After dinner, we had a session with Stephany where we made community agreements. We all shared out what we wanted to put in the community agreement (inside the house) and what we didn’t want in the community agreement (outside of the house). The community agreement was agreed upon by all the girls at camp.
After making the community agreements, Stephany talked about sexual identity. We all went around and shared what we like and don’t like about being female. Most of the time, we said women are treated unfair in their everyday lives. Thank you Stephany, for giving us an amazing session!
At the end of the session, we did our traditional clappies and got ready for bed. We dispersed to our cabins and went to sleep. We could not wait for day 2 to come!
Day 2
The middle school girls had to wake up extra early because they had frisbee games to attend. The other girls at Camp Long had breakfast at 9am, and played Overcooked and Super Mario Party on Penny’s nintendo. We had free time until the middle school girls came back. For lunch, we had chicken burger and fish sticks prepared by Kenzo and Anderson.
After eating lunch, we met up with the rope course interns, Maggie and Bev. We played a tag game together to warm up our bodies from the rainy cold weather. We split up into 2 groups and went our separate ways.
In Maggie’s group, we started out playing a game called “Do you have my weasel?” The goal of this game was to get the weasel without the person knowing who had the weasel. The groups had to return to their starting line in order to achieve the goal.
The key was to team up with each other and take our time when going back to the starting line. Although it was rainy, we still had a lot of fun while playing. The rain didn’t stop us from giving up and from smiling. The amount of trust the girls had for each other was incredible.
While Maggie’s group went inside the building to play another activity, Bev’s group had to face a challenge mission. Their mission was to use the plywood that was given to cross the other side of the “lava”. The rules were if one of the girls touched the lava, they had to go back to the start. At first, the girls didn’t have any problems crossing, until one of their plywood was too short to cross. They had to use their strength to pull up the plywood and get a longer plywood. The key to complete this mission was to trust your teammates, and share your ideas in front of the team even if it was a bad idea.
Afterward, we had free time until dinner was served. We had chicken adobo with rice made by Ashley and Sam! We are so grateful to have incredible people at AGE UP, to take their time and make food for us.
Once we were done eating, we had our annual Drake session. There were lots of tears and laughter while people shared their own stories. It was so amazing how these girls could just open up to each other and talk about their life problems. This is why I love AGE UP. Not long after, it was time for DANCE JEOPARDY!!!!! If you don’t know what dance jeopardy is, it’s basically jeopardy with dancing involved. We had a great time dancing and making memories with each other. We all got ready to go to sleep and couldn’t wait for day 3.
Day 3
Day 3 was the last day at Camp Long. After we ate breakfast, we cleaned the cabins and the Wonder Lab. We still had extra time before doing another activity, so we split up into our Hogwarts houses and played Heads Up. As soon as we were done playing, we circled up to share appreciations. As each person shared what they appreciated about the other person, they wrapped a bit of yarn around their wrist and threw the yarn ball to the person they appreciate. That weekend was full of laughter, crying, and dancing. And of course, lots of love.