Kids Camp 2012 - Day 1 (and 2)

The team (minus Hannah P who joined us in Minneapolis) met at Will Rogers World Airport in time to sit together and get to know each other a bit. It’s already been a busy summer for most of us, but this is clearly the highlight and everyone is thrilled be be here. Interestingly, only 5 of the 14 team members of have been to Wales before, and only 2 of us have participated in Kid’s Camp before. We’ve done as much preparation as possible, but still, there is much to learn. One of our co-leaders, Tracy Hunt (one of the team who’s been to camp before), led the group in a brainstorming session to think through game ideas related to this year’s camp theme, based on the Disney movie, Toy Story. Travel itself went well, with short lines, well-timed layovers, easy boarding and smooth flights. We ran into a bit of a delay in getting out of Amsterdam, but got here on time (or there abouts). This delay seems to have thrown KLM into a tizzy and they lost one of the teams’ bags. Poor Vanessa may have go a day (or two!) while they track it down, but they seemed like this was not a rare occurrence for baggage coming from Amsterdam and that the likelihood of it showing up was quite good. Even better was Vanessa’s attitude and planning ahead to have a change of clothes in her carry on. The immigration/customs line was a bit more difficult than I was hoping, and one of the agents didn’t seemed terribly pleased to be letting in a group like ours, but we answered their questions, described out relationship to “Dr. Rice” from the university, and all got through as a group after about 20 minutes; we stopped and thanked God once we were outside the building! As always, the first day on the ground (while our family and friends were sleeping) was a long, tiring and interesting one. We visited Tintern Abbey and Caeraphilly Castle with our tour driver, Robert, who was very kind and gracious to help us get caught up on our schedule. We finally got to the hotel in time to clean up and rest of and make it to a Welsh pot-luck dinner held to honor and thank Jennifer Monsour for her fabulous work as a summer intern. It was thrilling to meet (or re-meet) many of our friends and make some new ones. To round out the night, Derek made a wonderful speech and gave Jennifer a gift that the Welsh kids thought was of questionable value but of which Derek himself was quite proud. Now, we desperately need some sleep before attending 3 of Derek’s churches tomorrow.