After reading this article in the latest Camping Magazine about the abundance of foreign accents and personalities that can be found at summer camps across the USA, I was reminded of the positive feedback we get from our campers and families about this.
Over the past 15 summers at Twin Creeks we have welcomed (and loved) counselor personalities from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa in the Southern Hemisphere and naturally many hard-to-comprehend accents from the United Kingdom. In fact, many TC campers know the difference between the United Kingdom and Great Britain. Ask them tonight! They just don’t learn that in school these days…
Ironically, international students and counselors are an integral part of the classic american camp experience. When campers depart so do they; for journeys all over this amazing continent. These memories on top of their camp adventures make a summer over here unforgettable! I personally often recall the summer of 1995 as I left camp in PA for a 5-week trip from NYC to Los Angeles with 3 camp friends. It was truly the best vacation and adventure and ultimately Camp Twin Creeks will continue to benefit from an influx of funny words, food, expressions and skills from countries near and far!
Ask your camper for their fondest memory of an international counselor. I am sure they’ll have a huge smile on their face as they recall a name or moment!
Hi Girls’ Side!
Jamie, Powers, and I miss seeing everyone bright and early at Ladybug Lounge!
Hope everyone is enjoying school and looking forward to Holiday breaks coming up!
We have some exciting news for Girls’ Side, we’re getting a brand new cabin! The construction is underway! The new cabin will be behind upper main village on the way down to theater. Check out the pictures of the foundation phase of construction! 
With a brand new cabin comes a brand new name! Did you know all of our cabins at Twin Creeks are named after towns in West Virginia? From Bluefield to Mullens, the cabins increase in alphabetical order.
We would like this new cabin to be name after a town in West Virginia that starts with letter N-S. Take a look at the Map and send your votes to carly@camptwincreeks.com
Enroll today so you don’t miss out on all the fun! We can have a cabin-warming party for our new cabin addition! 🙂
Best Wishes & can’t wait to see everyone back at camp this summer!
~Carly
Can you find yourself in the Girls’ Side Selfie!?
After discovering the CNN.com article that claimed some 13-year olds check social media upwards of 100 times a day, this was the quote that struck me the hardest;
“I would rather not eat for a week than get my phone taken away. It’s really bad.”
Understandably, right? That is some sense of perspective and as an older human being I am not one to judge but just one to worry about where this leads.
Of course this is a great time to remind us all that 2 weeks at summer camp means no technology but this sort of statistic makes me even more self aware and concerned that we adults struggle to cope without the crutch of social media and our devices too. Imagine what we could or should be doing instead? Thinking, talking, looking, breathing, driving or just waiting…. I personally find it hard to sit at a red light these days and just wait for it turn green.
When our campers leave the West Virginia mountains after 2 weeks they always talk about how much they enjoy the break from technology, and all that involves. We love offering them that respite and look forward to doing so for many years to come. In the future when we’re dealing with holograms, virtual reality social media, or whatever the next big this is, we will continue to provide children with a safe and happy place free of many distractions but with the type of activity and natural distraction that will always be welcome – watching a rain storm from a porch, campfire chats, card games, bedtime stories, walks with cheers to and from activities and much more.
Our winter is but 4 days old and our week was so productive! From planning video and social media campaigns for the next 9 months, to working on a new brochure design, gathering and responding to feedback, staff career fairs, saving a date for our first winter reunion or enrolling our first new family for the 2016 summer it’s been a great week and felt so good to be ‘back’. We even emailed every 4th grade camper and family that attended camp this summer to offer them their free National Parks pass. Almost half has responded and received their pass by email today. What a week!
Next week will see more office and camp excitement for sure! Custom socks in the clothing store, perhaps?! 2016 summer dates confirmed, absolutely! Our first official enrollment mailing for the season too – look out for that in your email inbox starting late next week.
Enjoy your respective weekends with family and sports schedules, send pictures of any fun you have to our Facebook page and we’ll see you all next week!
Scrapbooking: Savoring those summer camp memories with photo albums & collages!
Do you remember when we used to take disposable cameras (or maybe even film) to stores to get pictures printed? There were no touch screens or instant photos that you could see. You had to anxiously wait to see what your pictures looked like days and even weeks after you snapped them. The excitement and nostalgia of looking back at happy memories is priceless!
We encourage you to not lose your camp photos! We know several campers do still bring disposable cameras with them (and we LOVE this!) so we hope you are printing your pictures and creating scrapbooks, photo albums, collages or at least saving them in a special place.
There are several different apps and websites to create photo albums and we wanted to share a list to make it easier! Drum roll please…
- Shutterfly – Easy to use to create photo books with user friendly templates and step by step instruction.
- iphoto for our Apple fans
- Mixbook – Allows you to make a sleek, classic photo album.
- Montage – Wow! This one is super easy to make photo books, just add your pictures and it create the beautiful layout for you, you just pick a theme!
- Social Print Studio – Easily print your Instagram photos and create books, collage frames and more from your Instagram account!
- Flipagram – Free App to easily show off several pictures quickly.
- Pic Stitch – Free App to create collage of multiple pictures.
Well, we hope this has inspired you to go dig out some old photos or go look on Bunk1 to find your pictures from this summer! Remember you can access your summer camp photos all year long!
We’d love to see any camp pictures you have displayed, collages, or scrapbooks that you’ve created! Happy memories.
Watch the video 
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