Summer

I've been back in England for just over a week now after what has undoubtedly been the summer of my life. 

The above phrase (the one in italics) was the slogan of the summer camp I had the privilege of working at for eight weeks this year. I've spent a good portion of my teenage years dreaming of jetting off to the US and living in wooden bunks with co-counselors and campers while spending my days running around in the middle of nowhere convincing campers to try new things. I've been dreaming of it for so long that it i, in fact, the fourth thing on my bucket list that I started aged 13. Seriously.

The eight weeks I spent in North-East Pennsylvania contained some of the best and worst days of my life. But the thing was even on the days where nothing was working out for me, there was nowhere on the planet I'd have preferred to be. That's the weird thing about camp. Whether it was being able to spend half my day standing on a strip of metal suspended 10m in the air while teaching trapeze, or having the opportunity to try archery for the first time, or even just being able to hang out in the bunk with a bunch of campers, there was something that made camp special enough that I didn't want to leave.

But of course I had to. So halfway through August we were left in New York where we got on a coach that took us to Miami. Thirty hours later, we swapped the bus for a boat, and we were sailing off to the Bahamas. Camp counsellors are really good at finding cheap things to do, so when someone found this bargain cruise, 50 of us decided it would be a great way to round off camp. We were right.

Cruising was followed by a road trip of sorts back up to New York, dropping in on some camp friends who'd started back at college on the way. A long flight later, I landed in Peru. My two weeks there were filled with butterflies, parrots and caiman. They are likely to be described in more detail at a later date.

But that was it. That was my summer! I had three months of total detachment from England and everything that was going on over here. It was crazy. It was awesome. And I really hope it will happen again.

Over and out.