Sunday 6th August

Well, today our last set of girls arrive! Morgan, El and Finley are all staying and Morgan's twin came last night!

We waited allllll morning, and not one new girl moved in until after lunch! So it was a pretty chilled out morning.

All the girls had arrived by the time it was dinner. The last session is meant to be quieter, not for us! We have almost a full bunk, 3rd session we only had 7 girls! Nevertheless, they all seem so lovely!

In the evening, it was time for theast camper orientation of the summer and then bed - thankfully!

Monday 7th August

The first day is usually a very stressy day. It's the day where the girls get to try out as many activities as they can squeeze into their day, whether it be project adventure, theatre and dance auditions, circus auditions or skate park. There are so many activites to try! All the performing auditions have to be completed in the morning, so as we have had so many theatre kids, it's usually a day where I ensure every child has completed all the auditons they wanted to do.
This session is different, most the girls either just want to do whatever they like, or they're here on a music scholarship and want to do a schedule full of music!

It was nice to have a kind of chilled out day, however, usually it is boiling hot on 6 minor day. Not this session! It was just like England and raining alllll day!

In the evening, we had our final "Night with Josh". Tonights theme was the 1950's and i'm so surprised I knew the majority of the songs!

I stayed in the bunk all night, even though it was my night off. It was far too cold to go outside, plus I felt like I was getting sick... uh, I mean poorly?

Tuesday 8th August

The first normal day of session 4, woohoo!

I awoke and went to the gym with one of my campers for first Major. Nobody turned up tl Nature Crafts or Batik before lunch, so I helped out in Jewellery which was nice, as I haven't been in there since session 2. Gosh, session 2 seems like a lifetime ago!

After lunch, I had ceramics, mosaic and chainmaile. They all ran smoothly, I get a vibe that session 4 is so much more chilled out than 2 and 3 - what a relief.

In the evening, we watched Blood Brothers. Surprisingly, a lot of Americans haven't heard of the Play! The director of the camp (Ron) directed it, and oh my gosh! It was absolutely phenomenal. These children are truly gifted! Despite seeing the show a few times before, the story still shocked me. It was a truly stunning and flawless performance - they even attempted the Liverpudlian accent too, which quickly turned into a northern/posh Queen accent haha.

After the show, the staff off duty had the option to go to the movies to see War of the Planet of the Apes. Not my type of movie, clearly. But I went to get off of camp grounds and get my McDonalds strawberry milkshake - which is so much nicer that the British milkshakes! This even had real strawberry bits in!

Okay, so the film started and oh my gosh I didn't even know what to think? For starters, huge apes were riding horses? I mean what? I'm sure that does not happen in the animal kingdom. I shortly lost interest and fell asleep.

At 1.30am the movie finished, and by 1.50am I was tucked up in bed.

Wednesday 9th August

Today was the last day before my day off woohoo!

It was a very greuling and tiring day for some.

In the evening Maddie (one of the counselors from next door) and I, decided that we would go and see the show Dirty Rotten Scoundrels as we would be missing it the next day from having our day off.

It was a brilliant show about 2 con men. They really pulled it off! And the Ron Schaefer moon is always hilarious when it appears (Ron is the camp director and founder of French Woods).

It was then time for my first Hercules rehearsal! Despite having bad ear ache, I still stayed for rehearsal. It was a fun rehearsal, we ran "Zero to Hero" and the finale song - not going to lie I have forgotten the name of it.

The clock struck midnight, and it was finally time for bed after a 17 hour day.

Thursday 10th August

A DAY OFF FINALLY!!

A bunch of us set off in the mini bus to Philadelphia around 9am.

It was around 4 hours drive into Philadelphia, it went by pretty quick. When we got there it was sooo humid and hot in comparison to camp! Camp seems to just have its own temperamental freak weather/climate change.

Amy, Mike and I began walking towards the shopping mall. I needed an outfit for Banquet, Amy needed shoes, and Mike? Well he was being trailed around all the shops bless him. Mikes from Liverpool and he is a General counselor at camp so he goes around with the kids.

On the way to finding the mall, we ended up walking in the complete opposite direction! We did however find the Liberty Bell on the way which was a landmark checked off of our bucket lists.

Philly is a place full of beautiful architecture. The buildings are all so fancy and unique.

We eventually headed the right way and found the mall, there wasnt much at all in there to be quite honest. There was a Forever 21 and H&M outside the mall, and luckily, Forever 21 was the place I found my Banquet outfit.

Okay so i'm not sure if I have ever mentioned banquet before but it's literally dinner on the tennis courts. Well I didn't realise how much of a big deal it was! It's like a camp prom, theres boys asking girls to banquet left, right and centre - even counselors. So of course, I didn't quite pack for the banquet occasion meaning I had to buy a new outfit!

After shopping, we headed up to the Observation deck in the Liberty Place mall. It was only $14 to go up, and it was great.

I mean, we were even able to take our artsy instagram pics which was a bonus!

We headed to Hard Rock Cafe and then ended up at Applebees for dinner. I wish i'd have taken a picture of my food on a real plate, with real knives and forks, but I was obviously just too excited. The knife and fork genuinely felt strange and heavy after eating with plastic ones for almost 3 months! I felt liberated!

After the meal we headed back across town to the Constitution Centre as this was where the mini bus was picking us up fro

We are still not entirely sure what happens in this building, but we took a picture anyway haha.

We arrived back at camp at around 12am and I headed straight to bed.

Friday 11th August

Back to camp reality today, away from civilisation, back in our own little camp bubble.

In some ways, the honest truth is that you don't want your days off in civilisation to ever end. But you also can't bare to think about never going back to camp. It's a strange whirlwind of emotions.

Today was a normal running day for me. One of the girls in my nature crafts lesson this morning created this beautiful flower crown all by herself!

Nature crafts is something I sort of turned my nose up at in the beginning. But as the summer has progressed and the more I researched about nature crafts, the more I came around to the idea. We make pine cone animals, dream catchers and a speciL diarama every session. This session we're doing a scene from Under The Sea in The Little Mermaid - my all time favourite disney classic!

At dinner time, 2 little Junior Lodge boys came up to me and handed me this little wooden box.

They told me to open the box and look inside. Inside were all these sweets, a picture of Robbie and I, a bracelet he had made and Hilary Duff lyrics around the outside.

It was literally the cutest thing ever! The picture of us even opens!

Of course I said yes! Thank god I bought an outfit haha.

We went to see the show "Lucky Stiff" which was really good. It's about a man who dies and his last wish is to go to Montr Carlo. If his long lost nephew will take him (whilst he's dead) he will inherit 6 million dollars. It was great, they even left the "dead" uncle on stage for the intermission haha.

It started terrentially raining so the staff meeting was cancelled as it was meant to get worse, ironically, the rain stopped haha! I did not however have an early night as I had the full run through of the staff show.

Saturday 12th August

Another usual day.

In the evening we watched the play "All My Sons". As you can tell, we watch so many shows here at French Woods, it is so PA orientated it's amazing.

Afterwards, Fran, Tye and I watched my all time favourite Hilary Duff movie "A Cinderella Story". It was so nice and chilled. Although a weird thing happened. Stephs twin (Kelly) gave me a box of tea bags... not just any tea bags, BRITISH TEA BAGS! and Fran and I stood outside my bunk literally sniffing this box of tea bags. Camp life for ya!

Sunday 13th August

I started painting my Little Mermaid pine cones in Nature Crafts, and finished 2 pieces in mosaics!

I also created some little clay flowers in ceramics... and when I say that I created them, I mean my friend Lauren helped. Anyone who knows me, knows that I was never artistically gifted in the drawing department haha.

In the evening, it was the staff show woo!

It was a great laugh and I just ran on stage whenever and completely winged it haha.

Big shoutout n thanks to my dress maker, co counselor and soul sister Steph for making the toga happen xo

It's been a fabulous week again in the woods, I just cannot actually wait for lazy day tomorrow!

I also can't believe that this time next week it will be time to start typing my final week of camp blog post! But don't worry, this is only part 1 of my Americamp adventure. The next chapter begins in the City and proceeds through to Boston, and eventually we will get to the part where I meet my parents in Las Vegas after over 3 months!!!!!!!

I almost have 16,000 views on my blog, I cannot believe it! I want to thank you all for reading, and do not hesitate to contact me on any social media.

Twitter: jadexleanne
Instagram: jadeoutram_

or follow camp through my eyes on snapchat: jadejdb

In the words of my super CIT Abby, Thanks Ya'll!

Jade xoxo