Hello Augusta friends! My name is Erin and I am writing to you from the first days of the Chinese New Year: the Year of the Pig! Pigs have been my lucky animal since I got my best pal, a stuffed animal piglet named Bubblegum, when I was five. Bubblegum has been on many adventures with me all across the world, from South Korea to India to Hawaii, all across Europe and North America… and now Bubblegum will be returning to Oak Village for their second summer of eating delicious crunchy wood chips and sailing through the night sky on the iconic Oak swing while everyone else is sleeping. Meanwhile, I will be the Village Leader in Oak!
I grew up in a beautiful valley in southern Oregon where I went to school in a barn and did a lot of bird-watching, fairy house-building and creek stomping. I spent my summers going to soccer, fiddle and dance camps but never went to a camp where I could rub oatmeal in someone’s hair, jump from a 100-foot tree or sleep in a magical treehouse fort until I came to Augusta two years ago.
I love to read and write and was able to combine those passions at Lewis & Clark College where I graduated with my degree in Rhetoric and Media Studies in 2017. Rhetoric is a fancy way of saying communication and helps us look at the numerous ways we connect and disconnect with others through language, society and culture. Two of the reasons I love Camp Augusta so much is that we are able to create so many deep, silly and life-long connections each session and that every single camper and staff members from that session contributes to a unique culture of gratitude, play and curiosity that can never be replicated.
As you can probably tell, I love to travel and since my last summer in Oak, I moved to Madrid, Spain where I taught English to high school students and travelled on many buses, planes and trains across Europe… it was both challenging and thrilling to live so far away from my family in the the United States and I am happy to be home in Oregon with my parents and my two precious cats, Olive and Oscar, as I prepare for our upcoming summer together!
Some other things about me:
- I love to read and talk about books. Some of my favorite YA series are: A Wrinkle in Time, Rebel Angels, Harry Potter (of course), Molly Moon, Artemis Fowl, The Golden Compass, and Lion Boy
- When I was 11 I broke my arm playing soccer just days before my Lion King debut as a beautiful dancing tropical bird in our school performance so I decided to rock my lewk and fly only in a circle on stage
- I was born in the year of the pig on the last day of the shortest month of the year. Can you figure out when my birthday is? Hint: I’m not 12 or 36 and the year I was born was not a leap year.
- I lost my shorteralls (the overall shorts pictured above) last summer in the camp laundry and I really need your help to find them
I can’t wait to see you this summer!
