Of Elrond's Council and Snails

In the morning I arrived at day camp. I felt nervous. In fact, I commented about how it felt like it was going to the council of Elrond. That quote led to a good discussion about Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit till everyone was there. Then came the camp leader. She gave us a talk about how we are chosen. I felt a very good quote coming on:

"I feel both ecstacy and unease at being a chosen one." -Megane, Urusei Yatsura Movie 2

I didn't say it though. We were divided into 3 groups. The teachers would rotate the groups. One taught enviromental art, one taught drawing, and one taught painting. I got the one I wanted: the one who taught painting.

So we started by doing a blind contour (a drawing without looking down at the paper) of our hands. My right handed drawn one had the markings offset. My left looked more like a pile of scribbles. Then we could draw whatever we wanted on there. So I did a dragon.

Then we would begin a painting. I noted to myself that most people did designs. All except me and my friend, where she did a sea dragon and I did an orca. Hers was turning out great, and a lot of people was starting to like mine.

Then we went to lunch. Me and my group checked the newspaper tower. We all took note that the tower was leaning. Than one of them commented, "They cheated! They do a whole row with the same issue!"

After that, we played capture the flag. It kinda made me feel out of practice. I usually was able to catch up to people better. In the end, the other team won.

We went to enviromental art next. Our teacher was Wendy, and she put a great stress on her background. So we had 5 stations: first was arranging snails and flower petals, second was making designs out of bike tires, third was graffitti art, fourth was arranging objects on a mirror, and fifth, the inspiration station, which was a boring little corner of the room.

Me and my partner first went to the graffiti station. She watched this odd movie, while I read The Saddest Place On Earth (yes, it was a takeoff on Disney). That book was way too surreal for me. The people looked like they had bile coming out of their mouths. Then we had to do a design on a truck. I pointed my design to the direction of using the last gallon of oil. It was more politics than enviromental, though. I walked away from that station, feeling extremely weirded out.

Than we went to the bike tire station. I insisted on using this pretty gold tire. As I spent 10 minutes cutting the tire, I was grumping about the wire siding. So I made mine into an eye. My partner had limited time because she hadn't done the feet yet, so I suggested she add flippers instead and call it a plateosaur.

And we watched the snail station. I was laughing at the fact their was a pan of salt right next to the snails. Nothing new though.

Then we went to the "inspiration station". We drew, and labeled the birds the teacher had on the wall.

Finally, we moved on. We were to go outside to collect enviromental items for making our bird project. Basically, dead stuff. So I asked the teacher, "May I use the roots of the scotch broom plant?" Obviously, she said yes. If you ask why, scotch broom is an invasive and a rather annoying plant.

My friend had a tendancy to find bird feathers. The rest of our group were whining. All we got were a few downy feathers. In the end, I got a dead Lily of the Nile and my friend got a dead yucca fan. Irony that it was a yucca.

At the end of the day, we did a boring activity, where we tossed a ball around. My whole group were incredibly bored, so we finished it the fastest. Than we had to go.

See you tomorrow!