City Slickers 2016

City Slickers 2016 is in the books as of a few weeks ago!  If you don’t know what City Slickers is, it’s an almost week long summer camp that our service unit puts on.  It’s hosted by our local United Methodist Church of which I also attend.  This year was the 10th anniversary of the camp and my second as one of the Junior leaders. Our theme this year was “Feelin’ Good” which centered around Healthy Living so that girls could use Cookie Dough toward payment for the camp.  There are three areas that service units can center programming around in order to be reimbursed by our council for the use of Cookie Dough – a cookie rally, STEM, and Healthy Living. 

We usually start planning for City Slickers in January.  I had a hard time getting motivated this year due to burnout, but once the troop year was over and I got about two weeks of non-Girl Scout rest, the other Junior leader and I nailed down the rest of our schedule.  We decided on two retired badges and a few other patches.  We usually try to do retired badges because girls most likely wouldn’t earn them with their troop.

The first was Sports Sampler, a retired Junior badge, and the other was BodyWIZE, a council’s own badge from the Old 96 council before the merger in 2007.  Our service unit still owned a copy of the requirements in our library, and our council still had both of them in their inventory.  In fact, I kind of doubt anybody even knew what the BodyWIZE badge was since we’ve had a lot of turnover since 2007.

Some of the activities we participated in included a trip to the Possum Kingdom Goat Farm (yes, Possum Kingdom is really the name of a town!) which features not only goats, but cows, one llama, donkeys, and spider monkeys.  Yes, you read that right.  Spider monkeys.   We also visited a karate studio, a pottery painting studio, and took part in a cooking class at our local Y.  The girls participated in a basketball clinic, learned CPR, attended a stress busting class, and even did some yoga.

Even though this didn’t really go along with the healthy living theme, I thought the girls could make kind of craft they would actually use later on down the road.  Last year we made duct tape water bottle holders which was a hit.  Originally we were going to make the famous tie dyed trefoil t-shirts, but after testing it out with a friend, I decided it was a little too involved especially since we had fifteen girls this year.  I thought pillowcases would be easier, plus everybody ALWAYS does t-shirts.  After tie dying the pillowcases, we took freezer paper and cut out a trefoil stencil.  Originally I was going to have the girl spray paint the trefoils themselves, but we ran out of time so I stayed up late Friday night and knocked them out.  They turned out great and the girls loved them.  SUCCESS

All of the girls in the camp (right under 50 total) wore pedometers every day, and we tallied up how many steps we took each day.  The pedometers were inexpensive, so they kept resetting, but we were able to able to figure out approximate numbers anyway.  I’m sure we took many more steps than what was recorded.  After tallying up the entire week, we totaled up almost 10 million steps!

The camp runs Wednesday through Saturday for Daisies through Juniors with the Juniors staying overnight.  Brownies stay overnight on Friday.  Cadettes/Seniors/Ambassadors attend the whole week and go on a trip the first half of the week.  This year they went to Dollywood.

All in all, it was a fun week of camp.  Spending time with girls other than the ones in my troop always gives me a pick-me-up, especially if I’ve gone into Eeyore mode at the end of our troop year.   This year we had a very sweet group of girls who were a joy to be around.  Even the ones that had a little bit of attitude were funny.

Did you know that my church is located right across the street from a railroad track?  And that a train comes by two times during the night and blows its whistle very loudly for a long time?  Yes, it’s true.  My lack of sleep can vouch for it.  But it’s nothing a few cups of coffee and some Junior smiles can overcome.  🙂