Hey friends,

In the past I’ve enjoyed reading travel blogs, from friends in Ghana, the Netherlands, Uganda, and India, among other places. I want to do the same thing. Its a good way to both process the experience and to keep people updated about how things are going. But I don’t necessarily want to start a whole new blog, so I’m just going to write on here.

With that, here’s part one. I’ve been in Camden, NJ, for almost two weeks now. For you all you West Coast peeps (which is almost everyone), Camden is the city across the river from Philadelphia. It’s been a pretty important place historically – the poet Walt Whitman lived here, Campbell’s Soup started here, the first record player, radio, TV, and drive-in movie theater were all created here. But like a lot of cities in the Northeast, in what’s come to be called “the Rust Belt”, Camden’s experienced a serious decline in the last 50 years and is now one of the poorest cities in the country. Among the things that contributed to this were a highway being built that cut the city in half, factory relocation that eliminated about half of the jobs in the city, block busting by real estate agents, red-lining by banks, “white flight”, and racial discrimination in the GI Bill.

This summer I’m working with Urban Promise, a Christian organization that’s been ministering in Camden for the last 20 years. Urban Promise runs after-school programs throughout the school year for elementary and middle-school kids. During the summer it puts on day camps. For high schoolers, Urban Promise has a “Street Leaders” program that basically hires high schoolers from Camden to help run the programs for the younger kids.  Which is cool because its empowering people from the area rather than always just bringing in people from the outside. But UP does need extra help with running the summer camps, so enter myself and the other 49 summer interns, mostly college students from around the country. I’m working at Camp Faith, the camp for 1st through 4th graders, at the main Urban Promise building in East Camden. Our sister camp, Camp Spirit, is for junior high kids and is across the street. There are six other camps at three other locations around the city; one for South Camden, another for North Camden, and one fairly close to us in the Northeast.

The first week we had training, and it was pretty non-stop. Didn’t even have time to unpack. I think I’ve actually had more downtime since camp’s started. And of course there’s been the challenge of trying to get to know a whole crowd of new people. I got tired of having 10ish hours of scheduled time each day. But there was a lot of good content: we even got to hear some sociology profs from Harvard speak on research they’d done in Camden.

I’ve been glad to actually start camp though. I’m teaching art, which for the most part is a blast. Kids are usually pretty creative and enthusiastic, and I enjoy encouraging that.
Other notes of interest so far:
1. I’m living in an Extreme Home Makeover house. Apparently the show did an episode in Camden, but the family couldn’t afford to keep living in the house, so Urban Promise ended up buying it. So while the other 46 interns are living in muggy non-air-conditioned houses, four of us guys randomly got placed in this super nice house. It’s actually a little TOO cool at night, but I think if we told any of the others that that they’d kill us.
2. One day during training a guy named Cleve took all fifty of us interns and whipped us into a gospel choir in about an hour and a half. Then we found out that the next day we’d be singing in front of  about 1,000 people at a megachurch, before Tony Campolo spoke. Which is exactly what happened.
5. The church was at a beach town called Ocean City, so I got to go swimming on the East Coast for the first time.
6. A girl on my team goes to Samford University in Alabama. Which is where Beck Taylor, our new Whitworth president, used to be. She says he’s awesome and they were all sad to have him leave.
7. They’re really into this Italian Ice kind of dessert here in NJ. They call it “water-ice” and are offended if you think its like sno-cones. Quote: “Water-ice is completely different from sno-cones.” And I have to say: water-ice does rock.
8. My camp’s theme is pirates. Today “the Pirate” came and tried to steal the “treasure chest” (really a toolbox), and the kids went insane. The guy dressed up as the Pirate literally got mobbed. I’m surprised he made it out of the room. It was pretty funny, actually.

Summary: Life working with Urban Promise is pretty exciting so far, but also really full. And I’m still adjusting, getting to know people, ect. I’ll keep you guys posted.

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