4 Weeks At Health Camp

Health Camp

Wednesday 15th October me, my sister and brother went to Papakura to start health camp. We got up early and put our bags in the car then left.

When we got to the camping place I was shocked because we weren’t camping outside, we were camping inside. When I went inside the building I was so scared because there were lots of people that I didn’t know. I had to put my bag down but I didn’t want to so one of the staff asked me politely to put it in the room. After everyone arrived we did a Powhiri and it was really boring.

When the Powhiri was finished we all left to our whares. My whare is called Pohutukawa, the boys whare is called Rimu and Rata. My whare was full of Samoan, Tongan, Cook Island, and Maori people. My best friend there was Maxine but we kept fighting so I got a new best friend called Jaymee.

We had to go bed at 8:00 on Monday to Thursday and 8:30 in the weekends. I had a real big problem because on the first two nights I stayed up the whole night,

I was really tired in the mornings. I also had a problem with going sleep to early because the girls were being really noisy. In the duty room there are night staff that stay up all night, if one of the kids got out of bed to muck around the staff will come and tell you to get into bed.

At health camp we did lots of activities. One of the activities we did was ice skating which was my least favourite because I was really bad at it. Also we did bowling with the Rimu Whare boys and I came second out of everyone but first out of the girls. My most favourite activity was school because I got to have fun with the boys and girls, I also liked the fitness in the morning. My two twin friends loved bike riding because you can choose riding a skateboard, bike, rollerskates, play basketball or use a pogo stick.

Once we had a girls night and we put on scary makeup. We wanted to scare the big boys but JP one of the staff members said “I just settled the boys down and I don’t want to ruin it”, so we asked Wendy another staff if we could scare the little boys but she said “No because then they will be really noisy and scared.” I was so gutted when they both said no but afterwards all the girls went and put nail polish on.

My whare had to have dinner out once but I didn’t want to go so I got angry and sat on the couch until they left me alone. They called my social worker Miranda, we went down stairs and did bike riding because I didn’t know how to ride a bike but then on that day I actually rode a bike. After succeeded at riding bikes I went to the games room and played with my friend Truze. We played pool and obviously he won because that was my first time playing.

Every morning and night time we had monitors that set up the tables and after breakfast or dinner they had to tidy up afterwards. Sometimes my friends and the boys didn’t want to do breakfast or dinner duty so me and Maxine done it for them. We are really good at doing the tables because the tables looked fancy and I like everything being neat.

On the full last day together we had a disco and a boy called Caleb was my date to the disco so I went with him. We danced all night and had lots of fun, we even had a little girl called Mele sing Let it go. She was so cute. I had to do the Samoan Fiafia dance too. That was interesting. After dancing we got to have one cup of popcorn and I gave mine to Truze. When all the popcorn was finished we went into one corner and some people got prizes. I was so disappointed because I didn’t get a prize but I still had lots of fun.

On the last day we had another powhiri and we done Maori songs. Me my sister and my two friends done a samoan dance to the music called La’u samoa by Marina Davis. After that we got my awards and my little friend mele sang Let it go. When we were almost finished we done a dance to Waka waka by Shakira. “You can all go home now”. I get up and go to my family then we go and get our bags. Advent asks me if I said bye to Caleb and I said no, she replied go say bye to him. I was going to say bye to him but then we just walked past each other smiling.

It was incredibly fun and exciting at health camp and I would love to go again but with the exact same people.