South Island Silent Camp 2008
Held in Blue Skies, Kaipoi, Christchurch on the last weekend of August, ithe South Island Silent Camp was a fantastic opportunity for NZSL students to immerse themselves in NZSL and turn off their voices for the whole weekend!
Silent Camps have a mixture of language activities for all levels, drama night and outdoor activities. It certainly provides a different experience than learning NZSL in a classroom as one gets to put their NZSL into practice with other NZSL learners and Deaf people.
We were the happy signing campers of the South Island Silent Camp. The cabins were great and the showers were nice and hot. The service from the staff of Blue skies was second to none. And did I mention the food, beautiful, the roast on Saturday night was superb. How many came: You said "60", WOW what a great turn out of people. We had 10 Deaf volunteers.
We were under the helm of Dennis Tod - Camp Leader who did an exceptional job of organising the activities. The activities were varied for all levels of people attending the camp. We had a great first night with people introducing themselves to each other as well as old friends catching up. It was great to see hands signing everywhere.
The weekend programme provided all campers with the experience of interacting with other campers at their level doing different activities. Their was lots of laughter as signers were trying to negotiate how to make sure their egg didn't break. We had a group photo of all, serious then a funny photo. We had the awards for best black and white dressed man/woman and runner-up. Dennis won for best man. We had our drama performance on Saturday night. There is definitely a lot of talent out there amongst the campers. It was a great night. Sunday afternoon we bid farewell to our fellow campers. This was sad to see everyone go but they were all a great lot of happy campers. We turned our voices on and they didn't want to stop signing. (Mini-report by Carol Smith)
WHAT A FABULOUS WEEKEND, THANK YOU TO DENNIS TOD AND THE OTHER DEAF PEOPLE. TILL NEXT YEAR!
