Meanwhile, at Chinese Family Camp . . .

Where did we go this last more than 24 hours? You missed us, right?

When we last saw the campers, it looked sports were getting rained out.

Uncle Joe showed his quick wit and came up with a plan to go bowling in the only bowling alley for about 30 miles around that was open. Directions were quickly googled and printed and drivers and campers sorted for the event. Here is a little youtube of Uncle Joe (OK, so this isn’t necessarily riveting, but history is made up of the little things, you know?):

Then Uncle of the Day was called to share his wisdom, only it was his and her wisdom – Uncle Eric and Auntie Debbie. Since Uncle Eric had about 30 seconds to think of what part of his vast wisdom to share, he went with humor:

We had chinese for supper and a meet and greet game designed to help us meet everyone else (yes, everyone else) at camp.

Then the real fun began . . .

We had the first ever Chinese Family Camp evacuation for a tornado warning. I’ll track down some pictures of this event to share with you all, but it was an interesting experience. It was pouring rain, windy, with vivid lightening and loud thunder. Someone was actually able to hear the tornado sirens. Ultimately . . . (read this as a lot of discussing what was really going on and deciding what to do, with a few folks taking charge), basically everyone who was over in Kimmel and everyone in the cabins went to the basement of the academy. Abby, who was finishing off her 8th birthday, thought it was great that everyone got together for a sleep over on her birthday. There were many discussions about the safest place to be . . . glad we didn’t have to test those hypotheses. There was a great deal of confusion about when the tornado warning was over. The many computers and cell phones with internet access were consulted. After about 35 minutes of late night togetherness, we headed back to our previous locations. Here is a picture of the weather radar about a half an hour after the all clear:

I’ve been told that the folks in the hotel were told to gather in the lobby – maybe we can find an eyewitness perspective to share later. Thankfully all was fine in this part of the world, although we did have several more hours of rain, lightening and thunder.

Tuesday morning felt like Friday morning to many of us. But we perservered. Heritage programs abounded. I hear there is a fleet of dragon boats in the Academy at this time. It stopped raining, so Uncle Joe, who had scrambled to find another indoor activity, was able to send everyone out for some kickball, soccer, tennis, etc.

Now, just so you don’t think we are living the life of luxury here, we need to inform you that the air conditioning in the Academy is not working. If you hear little bits of whining on the wind, it’s probably some of us who think air conditioning is as much a necessity as coffee.

Look for pictures later. I note that blogspot has a scheduled outage around 7:00 EDT, so don’t give up if you don’t find us for a bit.