Friday December 5, 2008
A Day In Lieu
Since this job requires us to work a fair amount of odd hours a system has been set in place where we earn “time in lieu” for every night we spend on an out trip or every weekend day we spend on training. I believe it is something like every night we are out we earn half a day off and every weekend day earns us a full day.
I had heard of “Shore Week” very early upon my arrival to Shoalhaven. It is by far the busiest most stressful, anticipated week of the year! Beginning on Sunday, somewhere around 210 students and 25 teachers from Shore Anglican in Sydney arrived at Shoalhaven and the week of fourteen groups began! Numerous “casuals” were called in to work for the week including staff that had worked at Shoalhaven in years past or had worked or were currently working at a different youthworks site.
Since I would be doing two days of hiking on unfamiliar trails I was paired with a guy who had worked at youth works a few years ago. We each had our own group but for the entire out trip part of the camp (the first three days) our groups pretty much operated as one. This was really good as I didn’t have to worry about not knowing where I was going. Not to mention it was nice to have a male leader around, being the only female amongst 30+ guys!
Each of the fourteen groups included one youthworks instructor, one teacher from Shore, 13-15 year eight boys and two year eleven boys who were meant to act as mentors and helpers. As I seem to have a habit of doing, after spending only a few minutes with my group I thought to myself “oh dear!”
In efforts to keep this short I’ll give a quick summary of our week:
Sunday – Tuesday: Out Trip
Sun: 4K / 1 hour Hike
Mon: 8K / 2 hour hike
Tues: 10K / 6 hour hike (Lynches back to Waterslea) With the boys navigating using map and compass between markers. I led a good bit of this hike, giving me experience in navigating the trails and the markers and just managing a group as they navigate through!
Wednesday:
Morning Canoe trip with Ben’s group (about 4K)
Christian Discovery
Caving (using my new head torch!!) Really getting to know the cave and feel perfectly comfortable taking a group through!
Thursday:
Abseiling at the tower
Archery
So although the week may have gotten off to a somewhat roughish start, as seems to be the case with many camps, by the end of the week I was sad to see them go. . .
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment