Spring Season at Mason

I am sorry I have not posted in a few weeks but the season has gotten under way here at camp Mason. We hosted a group of Chinese immigrants from the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  They were such a fun group and so excited to be here. I learned a lot from their teachers and got some great experience in high ropes with them. I have included a picture of me with my group by the firecracker.

  

I have been very busy as a naturalist these last few weeks we are preparing a gardening class to offer in the future. It’s really exciting to design a class that helps kids understand where their food comes from. We have a small garden on camp. I helped build some cold frames which are wooden boxes that have a plexy glass lid that will work as a mini green house and help protect the early spring plantings from frost.  Also we are building a composter for students to see how transforming your garbage to something good for your garden. We are going to be collecting the compostable garbage from the kids in the dining hall. I am designing a poster that follows an average supermarket tomato through its lifespan and compare that to the life of a local organic tomato. It’s so exciting that I get to use and apply my education!

Last weekend we hosted this group called Adventure Guides it’s a group of dads with their daughters and sons. This weekend we hosted a group of 350 girl scouts and their mothers. I can say that the 2 groups could not have been more different. I spent a lot of time with the girl scouts I had the same troop of 1^st and 2^nd graders all day they were so cute and so into the activities. That was not case for their mothers. I taught them pond ecology where we find macro invertebrates in the mud of the pond so it’s pretty much digging out cool bugs from the pond with nets and the girls loved it a few of the moms ran away screaming with their daughters tried to show them what they found. This class completely restored my faith in the fact that girls are so easily taught the behavior of being scared of bugs because these 8 years olds could not be happier to play with critters from the lake.

Besides working hard as a naturalist I’ve been exploring New Jersey. I went down to Cape May the southernmost tip of the state to visit Brielle and the boys Aiden and Linden. The Beach was beautiful maybe a little cold but it was nice to see friends. Brielle also came up for a visit and we went to New York City for the day. I was very interested in getting good food since the camp food is really starting to get old.  I will try to post more often than this sorry for the long wait for the update but I have been busy sending out my resume and cover letters to jobs for the summer and beyond. If anyone knows of something interesting coming up let me know!