I recently received a church calling as a young women's advisor. As such, I got the chance to attend Girl's Camp this year. Girls Camp is a chance for girls 12-17 years old to "rough it" for 4 days. They learn survival skills, make friends, go on hikes, eat tons of junk food, get minimal sleep, and have camp devotionals. It was a unique experience to attend girl's camp as a leader in a predominantly polynesian stake. Our group is the only "haole" ward, which put us white folks in the minority. What a great experience! Once we broke the ice and got to know everyone, it made girl's camp so much fun, and so rewarding. I made great friends with the leaders in my ward and the girls. The camp schedule was a lot more lax than when I went to camp, but it was better that way. We had more time to socialize and to play in the ocean- and how many camps get to do that!!! I boogie-boarded until my abs hurt and water poured out of my ears (any surprise I'm sick now?). I didn't take as many pictures as I should've but here you go.
Setting up Camp
The girls made our camp a banner and pasted cut outs of ourselves on it. I asked them to make me one and this is what they made. My nickname for the rest of the camp was "Sister Groovy", which is preferable to sister Grover.
It takes a lot of time and patience to organize a camp and to get a bunch of teenage girls moving. Don't even get me started on bathroom trips...
They set up their tent themselves!
To show I was there.
Halawa Ward Leaders. I'm the one pulling the "shaka"
This video sums up the experience.
The polys are so friendly- they also have a really dry sense of humor. You can't always tell if they are teasing or being serious. I just laugh because they could seriously beat me up. A few girls brought ukeleles on the hike and gave songs on the radio a Hawaiian flare. That's definitely a skill, let me tell you.
And finally, the food- don't worry, I didn't eat eveything on my plate!!
Even so, operation "diet" is currently in effect.
Each ward (and there were 9) represented a different country- ours was Korea. We made "Chop Chae", a glass noodle dish. There was also vietnamese, japanese, phillipines, malaysia, hawaiian, United states, Portuguese, Thai, and one other I'm forgetting. So what's on my plate you ask? Let me tell you.
1) Green thing in the middle: Lau Lau. A hawaiian dish in which you wrap a meat of your choice (usually fish) in taro leaves and cook it all day. The leaves take on the consistency of spinach. I didn't find this particular laulau very appetizing.
2) The gloopy stuff on the bottom was very tastey. It's a type of banana mash tapioca. Once you get past the consistency it's pretty good.
3) The stringy brown/red stuff top left corner is cat food. Okay, not cat food, but that's what I'm calling it because that's about what it tasted like. I don't think anybody liked it. It was a stringy meat/bean mixture that was waaay too salty.
4) The noodles up top is Chop Chae. Pretty good stuff.
5) The green pea stuff top right is a portuguese. I've had it before and I keep wanting to call it "sabogado" but I'm not sure that's the right name. It tastes like a bright tomato paste mixed with peas and meat. It's okay.
6) The fried looking stuff with ketchup is supposed to the "Japanese" food dish. I've never seen anything fried like that at any Japanese food court. Tasted fine though.
What's hard to see on the plate is a macaroni salad and a light fried rice.
In the bowls:
1) The blue bowl is a vietnamese dish made of white noodles and a very light broth-like soup. It reminds me of a very light chicken noodle soup dish with a subtle hint of spice. Not bad, but maybe a little bland.
2) The white cup is full of a thai coconut soup with chunky pieces of chicken. Any good Thai restaurant worth its salt serves this dish. It's one of my favorites (although this version wasn't quite up to par).
What you don't see on my plate that I loved was a plain dipped in coconut milk. Very yummy and easy to make. You pour a can of coconut milk into a pan then bake biscuits right on top. Wa-la coconut biscuits. Very delicious.
Overall a fun time at Girl's Camp, but I'm definitely happy to be back in my home with a bathroom within a 1/2 mile of where I sleep at night.
So here's the random catch-up part of my blog.
Our Commissary is prepping for the London Olympics. Can you tell what they used to make the designs? I was impressed.
Your tax dollars at work :)
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