The Cleaners Musical

I rolled up to Sanibel Sea School for the first time as a CIT. I've been going there as a camper for as long as I can remember, but this was entirely different. First, I received my coveted red STAFF shirt and met my fellow CITS and the counselors. We then waited for the kids to show up. The morning was for the most part quiet, since no one really knew each other. We joined for circle time and then split into our groups to go to the beach and look for trash to clean up. However, since the tide was all the way to the dunes, we didn’t find very much, and most of my time was spent getting to know the campers. We went back to the camp to have lunch, and then took the surfboards out to the beach.

I managed to score a deal to drive to sea school every morning rather than bike 6 miles there and 6 miles back, which was only really an improvement because no physical exertion was required, but at least I wasn’t subjected to the burning heat every morning and evening.

We took the campers out the next morning to make sand dollar mandalas, and our team's was pretty fantastic (no bias). We also took them out into the water to look for sand dollars. At first we were unsuccessful, but we found a plethora of sea stars. Eventually, however, the campers started locating some sand dollars.

Another big part of the week was preparing for the end-of-week surf tournament. Our job as CITs were to keep the kids entertained, push whoever was surfing to give them some momentum, and catch the surfboard so no one was plowed into. Keeping the campers in a fairly close cluster proved somewhat difficult, but we were able to draw them in by calling out a high-five race (who could get to the CIT for a high five first.)

I also managed (entirely on accident) to convince a large body of the campers that after they left, the staff made cleaning entertaining by performing a musical of our own creation called “The Cleaners Musical”. I fended off requests for sneak peeks by explaining that it was a secret musical.

Friday was the date of our surf race. It was raining, much to the dismay of the campers, and the tide was strong, but in the end the Green Greek Grouper Gods and Goddesses won the contest! A kid in our group decided to tie all of our surf group bracelets together so everyone could have their bracelet on the ‘golden coconut’- the spray-painted coconuts holding the bracelets of winning surf teams. Later, we went back out- to a bright sunny day- to play Capture the Fish.

At the milk and cookie party, we saw a slideshow of the week and the campers all said goodbye. We cleaned up and then the week was over.

Being a CIT was an incredible experience, which I hope to repeat next year.