|
|||||||
 |
|
Our fourth full day at Hye Camp offered quite a tremendous treat. Archbishop Khajag Barsamian arrived in the evening, and the campers performed a number of vocal pieces they had prepared for his visit. Srpazan's short evening schedule included time to meet with the campers after the performance, as well as time to meet with the many clergy in attendance as volunteers at Hye Camp. Everyone, young and old, have a sense of excitement when they begin to think about how special it will be when Srpazan celebrates the soorp badarak tomorrow morning.
On this Thursday morning, Fr. Tavit was the celebrating priest for morning worship. Fr. Tavit expounded on his sermon from Wednesday morning, providing more thoughts and feelings on the concept of forgiveness and being forgiven. He used another personal story to tie in how forgiveness, and also searched for personal experience from the campers. After the short morning service, the normal daily class schedule went into effect.
In religion class, Fr. Mardiros let the campers provide the lesson plan. Instead of presenting material to campers, he allowed campers to ask him questions about anything they'd learned and anything they hadn't learned but wanted to know. Topics ranging from the making of Holy Muron to Fr. Mardiros' favorite movies were discussed. In arts and crafts, all campers were given their Hye Camp t-shirt and they spent the class decorating them with colorful paint pens. A Hye Camp t-shirt was also decorated for Srpazan, and all the campers put their names on it. In culture class, Sark Tatosian, owner of Oscar Isberian Rugs, brought Armenian rugs and rug making tools, showed campers how to identify different stitching techniques. Campers got to color in their own rugs on papers already formatted with different styles of rugs.
Lunch brought the announcement of the third special competition of the week. Tuesday, there was the Beat the Deacon Long-ball Contest, Wednesday was the Lisa Mardigian Shootout, and today came the announcement of a contest simply called Score on the Coach. John Chiodo, sports director at Hye Camp, played goalie while any camper up for a challenge was given one shot at kicking a soccer ball past him for a goal. The competition took place during the sports classes in the afternoon and, of course, prizes were up for grabs. In the end a handful of future soccer stars, mainly from the older groups, did score on Coach John.
Instead of dinner signifying that the day was beginning to wind down, on this special day the fun was only starting. Heated competition in a number of events was imminent as semi-final and final games were on schedule in softball, basketball and volleyball. After an excited dinner, all the Olympics teams met on the sports fields and the competition range fierce. Basketball and softball semi-final games were played, and then in the marquee event of the evening, Team Hye Fever dug, set and spiked their way to a volleyball championship game win. This display of athletic prowess does not bode well for the other teams in the field as Team Hye Fever is also in the basketball and ultimate Frisbee finals and will be competing for a spot in the softball finals.
Following the athletic competition, everyone gathered in the mess hall to greet Srpazan with a vocal concert, and then campers headed off to their cabins with the counselors-in-training, who would be filling in for the counselors because tonight was the much anticipated counselors night out. An evening of bowling and fellowship provided a much deserved reward after all the hard work the counselors of Hye Camp have put into making this such a fun and memorable week for all of the campers. As the evening came to a close, and the last full day of Hye Camp 2003 just around the corner, friends began to reflect on the fun they'd had, the new friendships they'd made, and the special Badarak Friday morning being celebrated by Srpazan.
Posted by Jake at July 31, 2003 03:12 PM
