Riverside

So yesterday we went to Riverside camp just north of Story City, IA for a tour. Usually on tours we're supposed to have few questions ready to ask, and then that night we blog about our questions and the camp and cool things like that.

Now I've never really been able to figure out if I am extroverted or introverted. For anyone who doesn't know an extrovert gets energized from being around people, and an introvert is energized by spending time alone. Anyway on Monday I was at Northwestern College in Orange City, IA (which is a pretty sweet school and town) for a scholarship competition, so I had to be around people all day and talk to people and try to impress people. Then yesterday I was just like, "Leave me alone. I want to be by myself." So while we were on the tour I didn't have any questions or comments. I was just tagging along, and I would go check things out on my own while the guy was talking. So I figured out that I'm an introvert, but I didn't complete the assignment very well.

Now for this blog we're supposed to have questions that we asked about the camp, but I didn't ask any. It was also due this morning, and I didn't do that either. So I'm just gonna tell you about Riverside.

Riverside is a Lutheran church camp that was started in 1943 on 120 acres of land. Their main program is summer camp, and probably the biggest thing about summer camp is the mime they do on Thursday night to close out the week. The mime is different every year, but it always depicts the gospel. Many people say it is the highlight of the week. Riverside runs a daycare on their grounds for people in the area. They just built a nice new dining hall about 5 or 6 years ago. They have also had about 10 new cabins built by a church family for them recently, each containing 6 bunkbeds and a bathroom and shower.

 I just realized that the only things I'm gonna talk about are their nice buildings, and that helps no one get to know Riverside well. So I'll just skip to what Hidden Acres can learn from Riverside.

I think that Riverside does their buildings MUCH better than we do. Most of their buildings and all of their new ones were built excellently and designed expertly. I think that here at Hidden Acres we put too much emphasis on getting things done quickly rather than doing them well. I have also seen this attitude spill over into other areas of camp like cleaning. I believe we need to slow down a little bit and think about quality rather than quantity. I think that we need to finish the last project before we start another one. I definitely think that when we start designing our new dining hall we should take a look at Riverside's and commit a little construction plagiarism :)