November Was Fun!

          Lots has happened in our camp world during November. We've enjoyed visits from many CK friends, announced our 2011 Leadership Team (we'll write about this later, but you can read about it now in the Nov.-Dec. issue of the "Sundial"), started interviews for staff assistants and counselors, attended some educational events, received many camper enrollments (yay!), and of course enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday. Before we turn the calendar to December, however, I'd like to share about two of these special days.

          I had extra help during one of our camp tours days. THREE staff assistants came out to help: Mandy, Caroline and Mitch. Tours are much more fun for me when I have such enthusiastic helpers, so it was a great day. Here's a photo of them with our youngest tour taker of the day. She may be short, but she had a lot of energy! Note that she's holding a classic CK-NJ folding disc: a collector's item. 

         

         
         This was the first time that Mitch, Mandy and Caroline had seen the new "pedestrian plaza" at Blair, which was completed after the end of our summer season, and they were pretty excited about that. They did some "practice socializing" in the Adirondack chairs on the new stone patio and demonstrated their camp enthusiasm with a jump off the wall. This newly renovated area of the Blair Academy campus will be really nice for camp, during canteen, evening shade and other activities.

          On Veterans Day, staff assistant Andrew invited us to an "organic dinner" to raise funds for the environmental club at Gov. Livingston H.S. in Berkeley Heights (he's the president). Teri, Jeremy, Vanessa and I ventured over with our plates, cups and forks (no waste!) and enjoyed a delicious, healthy meal. We were surprised by the absence of Frito pie, but really enjoyed the mixed berry-mango cobbler. Andrew did a great job organizing his club members, who worked very hard. They even washed our dishes before we left! 

But he did stop by our table to socialize.
We were honored -- the president himself!



No surprise to us, Andrew was on
the  move all night long. Busy guy!

Teri brought the nicest dinnerware of
the evening.  I won't show you mine,
but it definitely wasn't a matching set.



              It's been a great month and now we are just a few days away from our camp reunion! It looks like we'll have our usual 00 or so people for a fun few hours with our favorite people in the world. If you are a CK-NJ 2010 camper or staffer and haven't told us you're coming on Sunday (12/5), you've still got time if you hurry: http://www.campuskids.com/CKNJ_Reunion.htm.

          Finish up that last turkey sandwich and get ready for December. If we don't see you at the reunion, we'll see you on this blog when we open up the December page.

   Tom 

Mini Reunions

     I’ve had two visitors since I last wrote, and why is it blog-worthy? Well, both happen to be CK NJ-ers from years past!  Although they are no longer staff members, both of them have special places in Campus Kids history. And they have become great friends of mine as well!

The first visit was from Dave Morgan, who’s been everything at camp from a counselor, to the Day Trips & Special Activities coordinator, to Athletics & Evening Programs coordinator. Alright, enough with that “official stuff”… most importantly, you probably remember Dave as the lead guitarist and one of the Dave’s in “The Dave2 Experience,” and later “Dave2 and the Ste Amigos” – both functioning as the official CKNJ “house band” for our special events at camp. They played in the first four Campstock’s, and I am pretty sure helped to start our beginning of the summer music event, Rock of July! Dave has been a part of CK since 2005, and currently lives and works in the United States.

     Dave came down from Connecticut to visit us in NJ because his all-time favorite band, Muse, was playing at the Prudential Center in Newark. So we all got tickets to go – and what a show it was! If you like rock music and amazing vocals a-la Freddie Mercury of Queen, you should absolutely try to see Muse if you have the opportunity. They also had amazing lighting and set stuff going on – three platforms rising and lowering off the stage for each musician, a laser light show, and even some huge inflated eyeballs bouncing through the crowd! I got some pictures, but it just doesn’t do it justice!   

     Besides Muse, it was also great to catch up with an old friend, and we even scheduled an impromptu lunch with the 2010 Staff Assistants who live nearby. Dave had fun chatting with the Staffies, not just to reminisce about camp, but because some of them were his campers in 2005 and 2006 (members of “Tree Huggers Anonymous” and “Knights of the Roundtable”). “They’re all grown up!” he said to me on the ride back from lunch. It is amazing to look back at their old bunk group pictures and see how they’ve changed from chubby-cheeked campers to young adults that did amazing work this summer at camp.
     My second visitor was Jack Dinwiddy! Jack and I both started as counselors at CKNJ in 2003! Then, as the years went on, we got to be Head Counselors together for the older kids in camp in 2006! Needless to say, we’ve spent a lot of time together, and although now he is not a staff member of CK anymore, he is still working in the world of camp and has become one of my closest “colleagues” in the profession.

For this particular visit, Jack came over to the US with his girlfriend, Stacie, for her brother’s wedding in Georgia. So, they took the opportunity in the states to go on “holiday” – a vacation – and travel all over the Northeast catching up with camp friends from summer’s past. Jack and Stacie came by the office when they arrived in NJ and spent a few hours relaxing before Stu and Vanessa joined us for a special dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Yuki Hana, the Japanese restaurant in town. We had great food and conversation, and got a nice picture of us all, too (thanks to Stacie for being the photographer!). They then joined me in a quick car ride home and spent the night at our house. We talked for hours about camp and lots of other stuff too (but mostly camp!) and even though we thought we were boring Stacie and Jim, they both commented that it was cool to meet the people that their significant others have been talking about for years!   As quickly as they arrived, they were off to their next adventure; but it sure was great to see Jack in person instead of just emailing back and forth and chatting via Facebook.
     It was nice to have these little reunions with my camp friends. And it will be AWESOME to have our BIG camp reunion in just a couple of weeks! I can’t wait to see everybody and hear how life has been since camp ended. I hope you’ll join us if you can. You can RSVP to the reunion here if you haven’t done so already!


See you there!
Teri

Photo Contest Update

I just wanted to remind everyone about our Official Wear Your Campus Kids T-Shirt In A Photo Contest is underway. I'm also here to announce that the entries sent in so far can be seen here. So far we have a pic from Matt Lurrie at the Great Wall of China. Okay, in his defense, we hadn't announced the contest before he left to go overseas so he got creative. We also have a photo of Mitch at the Washington Monument which shows off some pretty fancy camera work. Oh... and I snuck one in of me at Blizzcon next to someone dressed up as a Spirit Healer from World of Warcraft.

Remember -- we'll be picking one camper and one staff member to win a cool prize -- an embroidered CK-NJ fleece!

Send us your pics today! CKNewJersey@campuskids.com

See you soon,

~Jeremy

Blizzcon, Website and Blogspot!

Well, I haven't blogged in about a month so I have quite a few things to tell you about. This might be a long one, so fill up your water bottle, grab a snack and find a comfortable chair.

First up is Blizzcon! As some of you might remember, my wife and I are enthusiasts for a certain video game you might have heard of, called World of Warcraft. The company that makes the game Blizzard has a convention every year called Blizzcon. Fans of all their games can gather once a year in Anaheim, California to demo new games, talk to the developers and get the inside scoop on upcoming updates to the games. Warcraft is a MMO game, which means Massively Multiplayer Online game and we play with a whole group of people. These groups are called guilds. Although we talk over the phone and the computer often, we used Blizzcon as an opportunity to meet 9 of our "guildies" in the flesh. We had a great time together at the con. Among the highlights was a trip to Medieval Times, Vanessa winning a WoW Soundblaster headset and the closing concert featuring the only band to ever play the definitive greatest song in the world, TENACIOUS D!

Another amazing thing that happened at Blizzcon was running into former long time CK-NJ camper Alexis C! Alexis attended CK-NJ from 1995 to 2001. That's seven unforgettable summers! She spotted me because I was wearing my official Campus Kids Tie Dye shirt. It was great to catch up with her and reconnect. We joked about the old days of CK and had a blast swapping Warcraft stories, too! All in all, it was a great trip and I'm glad I was able to go this year.

    In other news, there have been several updates to the website you should check out. First, there is our "Wear Your Campus Kids T-Shirt In A Photo Contest". All you have to do is wear your Campus Kids shirt in a photo. We expect great things from the contest. You can read the full details here. Second, the invitations to our 2010 Camp Reunion have gone out. You can read the info, get the directions and RSVP on this page. Also, I've added another video to the CampStock 5 page. We'll continue to add videos to that page throughout the winter!

    

The final piece of news this blog entry will deliver the introduction to the CK-New Jersey Blog on Blogspot! We will be posting all our entries now on campuskidsnewjersey.blogspot.com. We'll still be posting entries on the CK website, but on blogspot our readers can "follow" us and subscribe to the blog which will get them automatic notification anytime we update a new entry! Exciting times! Check it out!

Thanks for reading,

~Jeremy