Summer Camp, Part 2: The EnGabening

Norah had her camp for a week, and during that time Gabe and I had "man time" in the mornings. We never managed to do much of importance during our man time, but he greatly appreciated just having me to himself for a few hours.

The next week it was Gabe's turn for camp. It was actually a pretty good experiment for what school would be like coming up this fall. Each day of camp started at 9:00 and ran until 3:00--the longest period that Gabe had ever been away from the house AND the first continuous string of busy days without the benefit of any nap times.  He's not really been using his nap times anyway for awhile now--though I've continued to insist the two kids go to their beds and do quiet things for an hour or two every day simply because I am a tyrant who likes me some kids out of my hair for a little while each day--but he's also never gone a long stretch without at least having the option for a nap there.

And he did great on both counts. He also had swimming lessons each night that week (something else we're working on this summer--both kids are progressing . . . swimmingly), so it was an especially busy, active week.  But he made it through and loved pretty much every minute of it.

Gabe's camp was called Jedi Ninja Camp. Yeah. They couldn't have possibly created a concept more unlikely to live up to the potential of its name, right? I mean,  Jedi training is one thing. Jedis are cool. Using the force is cool. Cutting things with lightsabers is cool. That alone would have been pretty awesome. But then they multiplied the awesomeness exponentially by adding the ninja component. Ninjas hide in the shadows, which is cool. Ninjas kill with stealth and guile, which is cool. Ninjas use throwing stars, which is cool. Combining ninja skills with Jedi skills would effectively create the perfect weapon (though, technically, the Jedi wouldn't be using ninja skills because assassination is the point of ninjaing, and Jedi don't work that way--just to split hairs a bit).

So there was little chance this was going to live up to the hype. Gabe didn't find out about the camp until a few days before, because we didn't want him pestering us fifty times a day for multiple weeks asking us when his camp started or what he was going to be doing there. But those two days provided ample opportunity for him to build up the classes in his head to mythical proportions. I think he pretty much assumed that he was going to be doing ACTUAL Jedi training--like Luke on Dagobah or . . . something with someone from the shitty prequels, I don't remember what happened in those movies well enough to remember any training sequences.

There's a pretty specific way this training sequence should have played out, too. With a traditional 80s training montage. And there's only one song that would fit to play in the background--"You're the Best" by Joe Esposito.  When I let this little storyline play out in my head--Gabe training to be a ninja Jedi, with music playing in the background as he progressed from training one skill to another, gradually gaining confidence and skill, my brain immediately started playing that song. It didn't go with "Eye of the Tiger" or "You've Got the Touch" from the Transformers movie or even the theme song to the Greatest American Hero (which I have to admit is only about two leaps away for my brain to go to pretty much all the time), and after I did a search to find that song on Youtube I figured out why. Because it's from the Karate Kid.

And I'm pretty sure that something similar was playing out in Gabe's head, too, in expectation of this camp. I'm reasonably sure that he was convinced that he would be able to actually use the force after his training. So I was a little concerned that he would be HUGELY disappointed in the camp when he figured out that he wasn't going to train to be a Jedi OR a ninja during that time.

But he wasn't. He had a great time. And he'll be going back towards the end of this month for a Transformers camp. How Transformers and a karate dojo go together, I have no idea. But it should prove pretty fun for him all the same.

Sadly, we didn't get a lot of pictures or video of his camp. Norah and I went to the camp a little early the first day so I could watch a bit, and I got some video of that. And then Libby joined them one day when they went to an acrobatics academy and did some training there (they filled the afternoons with stuff like that and going to movies and such because, let's face it, trying to get that many kids that age to do actual karate training for an entire day would be about impossible) and got a couple pictures and a bit of video.

But here's what we got.

 Gabe practicing sword moves. They spent a fair bit of time learning how to thrust, apparently. That and defending while holding a sword straight up and down were the only two things he talked about specifically afterwards.

Gabe in the foam pit during the acrobatics training. Not a whole lot of story to go with on this one as I wasn't there and there weren't many other pictures of him from that day to work with. My guess is they were learning how to levitate these light foam blocks with the force to start their training.

 

 

 

And again Blogger isn't letting me separate these videos or even move them away from that last picture. I swear, how tough is it to create a blog website that doesn't suck?

The first two videos are of the obstacle course Gabe went through the first day. The last video is from the acrobatics academy. Since I can't watch the videos again or anything while they are loading, and I'm too lazy to wait to see what they are, I guess you'll just have to watch them and figure out what's going on.