Last week we held our second annual Spring Break Camp, and it went really well! We enlarged the size of the camp slightly, to about 48 kids on any given day. We did way too much stuff to document completely, but here are a few pictures to give you sense of what we did.

First, here's a picture of the youngest group on top of Rattlesnake Mountain, which was our day hike. We send all the groups out on day hikes, varying the mountain based on the age and ability of the group. Rattlesnake was a great hike for the youngest kids, and we had a lot of fun.

Next is a picture of the kids playing old-time games at the Homestead.

We started the week doing teambuilding activities. Here are two campers working together to cross one of the obstacles on the Low Ropes Course.

Here are some of the kids playing frisbee during free time.

We took the kids up to the Crux to go rock climbing. They did a great job climbing, even on the climbs that are designed for slightly taller people.

Of course, a week of camp would not be complete without a trip to visit the farm animals. Below is a picture of some of the kids with Jack the goat.
We had a great time at camp, and we hope that the kids did too. We hope that we'll see some of them again at future break camps!

Old Friends, New Faces

It has been a long time since we posted to the blog, but we have been keeping busy. In March, we all took some vacation time and had all sorts of adventures. I went to Brazil to see Viv Poit and Aja Bryant, the former Assistant Director and Chef, respectively, here at Pok-O. The visit to Brazil was awesome, and it was really great to see Viv and Aja again. Both of them are teaching English--I guess all that time working with French Canadians inspired them! Below is a picture of the three of us at Iguassu Falls, which is one of the largest waterfalls in the world. (When Eleanor Roosevelt went there, she said that Iguassu made Niagara Falls look like a leaky faucet.)

At the end of March, we started our Spring Season with staff training. Our staff this spring is mostly full of familiar faces: those of us who were here all year (Stites, Brian, Molly, Liz, Mark, and Julie) plus Tim Oprzadek, who worked at Pok-O last Fall and Spring. We have one new person on staff: our intern Blythe Czaja. This internship will finish up Blythe's degree in SUNY Cobleskill. Below is a picture of Blythe on top of Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain during staff training.