Barretstown....A Serious Fun Camp

Hi y'all and sorry for the blogging hiatus!  We have been buuussy! Now that things have settled down a bit I will try to catch y'all up on the recent happenings. July 31st I left Dublin to spend 8 days at Barretstown, a camp for children with serious illnesses. 

To give you a little background...the camp sits on grounds of Barretstown Castle and was founded by Paul Newman in 1994.   The castle and land were previously owned by Elizabeth Arden who extensively reconstructed, redecorated, and refurnished the castle in the 1960's.  The door of the castle was supposedly painted red at that time after her famous brand of perfume Red Door.  At some point in time, Paul Newman visited the castle and thought it would be the perfect location for one of his Hole in the Wall Gang Camps which he originally started in Connecticut.  In 1994 the camp was founded and the rest is history.  The camp has been serving children from all over Europe since then. 

The famous "Red Door"

To be honest I was a little a nervous to go to camp.  I had no idea what to expect, who I would be working with, or what I would even be doing.  Well let me tell you, my nerves flew right out the bus window and I had one of the best weeks of my life! The first day and night at camp was spent getting to know all of the volunteer caras (their word for counselors) and learning what our responsibilities would be.

Uisne and the bus....on our way to Barretstown!

My camp session had children from Russia, Spain, Poland and Ireland and we had volunteers from those countries and more. I can now say I have friends all over the world!!  After we had been fully "oriented" to camp policies, etc we had the rest of the evening to socialize.  We walked around the grounds and explored.

My cottage #13

The main part of camp looked like a little village

The theatre

Maura, Uisne, Rebecca, Sue (and me of course)

Posing in front of the castle

The lake in front of the castle

Portrait of Paul Newman drawn by a previous volunteer

There were sheep all over!

This group of people had incredible musical talent and we spent the evening playing songs and singing.  Despite the fact that we were from all over the world we all knew the same music!

The next morning we had to get our cottages ready for campers. That meant making welcome banners, posters, bed labels and place cards for the dining hall.  It was like middle school art class and I was in heaven!!! It's not common that I have an excuse to paint, draw and use glitter these days.  The girls in my cottage were Spanish (age 7-13 years) so our art projects were in English and Spanish

The arts and crafts room full of volunteers

Laura (Spain), Me and Anne (Ireland) with our welcome banner hanging and ready!

That day we were also taken down to the stables to get a quick lesson on how to lead a horse and to play with Daisy, the camp lamb.  The camp has at least 15 horses and ponies, sheep, pigs, rabbits and guinea pigs for the kids to ride and play with.  Chad was so jealous that I got to pet a lamb.  Every time we drive by a field of sheep in Ireland he says how soft they look and how much he wants to pet one...Well let me tell you they aren't that soft and they stink! Daisy was pretty darn cute though!

Me and Daisy : )

Later that afternoon our campers arrived and the camera was put away. We weren't allowed to take any photos of campers or when campers were around for their protection and safety. The next 7 days were filled with re-learning Spanish (my campers spoke little English), archery, canoeing, arts & crafts, dressing up, high ropes courses, horse back riding, board games, fishing, putting on shows, singing, dancing and laughing!!  I haven't danced so hard, laughed so much, sang so loud or acted so goofy in years.  But that was MY JOB for an entire week....to be a big kid and help these little girls forget they were ever sick.

It was amazing to me to see these kids who had come from all over the world, speaking different languages, but all affected by similar circumstances. What was even more amazing was that after the first 5 minutes we had all forgotten they were sick because who has time to think about that when you are having so much fun.  Below is the only photo I got during the week at camp....I couldn't help it. These two volunteers were putting on a skit about Australia and it was hilarious!!!!

Anne as Kenny the Kangaroo, Nuria as the Koala, and Hanna

Tons of new friends!!!

A drawing one of the campers made depicting all of the things she got to do at camp : )

Needless to say, I had an amazing week and I will remember the girls in my cottage for the rest of my life! Barretstown is a magical place where sick kids can just be kids and adults can be kids right along with them.  Let me also tell you I was EXHAUSTED when I got back!!