Day 51

this is the second full day of camp. warm, sunny, blue heat beat down from the skies and rolled down the tips and tops of the mountain trees. more energy was reawakened inside the mass of junior highers campers by the time late afternoon had come.

we met for our starwood dv club again today. everyone was a little more open and they didn't seem as nervous as they had yesterday. one girl, who is probably only twelve or thirteen, impressed me. they were all excited to get their hands on the cameras and load the mini dv tapes in themselves, but she was really pumped. i explained the rule of thirds to them today and she practiced and asked to check to make sure she was getting it right. they were all getting the hang of it. as we walked around to shoot, she told me how she was supposed to be in a coca cola commercial when she was younger until they decided to go with animation and how her mom was a model and all sorts of stuff that outlined this personality that, i can imagine, could grow to accomplish good things with a camera. some of the boys were working and thinking at the same time and reiterating and double-checking shot techniques.

i had a little time off before dinner so adam, an australian counselor, and i took the kayaks out. we paddled to the point to the far left of the beach and removed some large debris left from floating logs as we traveled to the point at the far right of the beach's viewpoint. the sun beamed across the sky and over light white mountains and we occasionally stopped dipping the paddles to lean back in our kayaks and float and look at everything and then would slowly began to paddle underneath and around the hanging trees next to the waves and rocks. a chill, relaxed process. it was the perfect break and after we had visited the aqua park and had gone off the blob, we headed back. dinner, and now q-town. i'm really liking doing lights and powerpoint.

all this as given a pretty solid measure of momentum. this has been day 51 on the island.

Day 17

today started as a work day, but a couple of the guys asked if i wanted to get in on a prank and, seeing how it is my responsibility to make videos of any important action, i left the office to do just that. sounds like a good reason, right? here's how it went down..

one friend, jen, had left her car, a teal caravan, at the ferry lot over the weekend when she went to the mainland to visit her rents. we left camp a few hours before she was to arrive back, bringing with a massive tube of saran rap and several cleverly-worded posters for the decorating of this otherwise bland vehicle.

i brought a full battery, a fresh tape, and the gl2 canon video camera along to 'document the important action' for future video use. this turned out to be an awesome experience in on-the-go, documentary directing that i'll begin to edit tomorrow morning.

after the forty-five minute drive, we found her van-tastic vehicle (that was one of the titled signs we prepared) and rapped the entire thing with heavy duty saran. surprised with our speed, we were forced to wait around the parking lot for an hour until the ship was to arrive.

documentation during this waiting period captured everything from the poster's lame word-plays to passerby's reactions to our van's artwork to our own reenactments of '"move that volkswagon rabbit!"- the car we drove in with, and finished with mocumentary, over-the-shoulder and blank-stare interviews among ourselves, the five villains. finally the vessel docked and we hid- i jumped into the bushes, of course, to get the reaction shots, while the others scattered around the parking lot. we waited. i'm going to stop explaining here because i'm not going to be able to do justice for the moments that followed.

i can't wait to go to my office in the morning to edit and produce this.

a couple guys that i hadn't gotten much time to chill yet went down to the dock after dinner and jumped in for a quick swim. freezing-cold water.

and apparently, there are several poetry-interested people here and they got excited by my idea to have some sort of weekly original poetry reading, complete with low lights and djembe accompaniment. we'll see how that goes.

also, tonight after group bible-study and swiping some left-over cookies from the kitchen, the two new zealand dudes and i went for another jam session. each experience has been jelling better and better and we're gettin some creative, malleable stuff, which is exciting for all of us. it'll be interesting to see where we might be able to take this..