Letters Home
Camp Half Blood Campers' Correspondence a Year Later-[Elizabeth Rush to Drs. Anthony and Mary Ann Rush]
Dear mom + pop,
Camp's off to a decent start. It's not the least bit like last summer's internship, but I didn't exactly expect them to be similar. We voted on options for whole cabin activates that will last for the summer, and each week we can sign up for "extra-curriculars," which are bonus classes that have limited numbers of open spots or just use our free choice blocks for something random, like fighting practice. The voting for the cabin activities was really just deciding what type of activities we wanted to do as a cabin and when in the day, for example, we decided it would be best to start the day out in the armory, digesting breakfast over weapons analysis and care, then step it up to the arena for morning conditioning, endurance training and sparring, practicing archery with the Apollo cabin and on odd days picking it up to full mounted combat. After lunch would be Crafts with the water-based cabins (since there's so many of them with so few campers), team [building] sports, monster training, water sports, etc. You get the picture. Most of us attend the Military Tactics lectures in the amphitheater during the first free choice slot, as well. Our Dr. Pompei knows his stuff. So everything's started out all right, all things considering. We didn't actually play Capture the Flag this week because the first week has turned into extensive tutorials, despite the few days of orientation we went through. Apparently there are still new kids coming in by the day, so I suppose the more we can educate them on the goings on for the summer, the better. One of the free choice activates at the moment is 'how to take care of yourself'. I'm guessing it's for the benefit of the younger children, but it's being led by the two Dionysis Returnees (I could call them 'elders' but they're really not that old) so I don't know how valid it's going to be. The Returnees teach most of all the classes. It use to be that classes were self-run or run by the cabins' head counselors, but with all the new kids and reforms, simply self-teaching or being taught by Chiron wasn't enough. At first the head counselors thought it to be a bit of a drag being reduced to assistant-instructor, but many of the Returnees have special training and are able to run activities not previously available, like track and field events, evolution of sword fight, glass-blowing, or sustainable agriculture. The Hephaestus cabin keeps talking about designing and constructing siege weapons, which I'm looking forward to.
The only problem I can think of that has arisen, and is not really one I can help, is my name. Apparently my name sounds similar to my head counselor's, Annabeth Chase. She keeps the joke from going very far, but apparently some of the guys in our cabin think they're pretty good at one-liners. Almost every time I'm anywhere near Annabeth, one of them pops up with 'What's the Rush, Chase?' or 'The Beths are Rushing off on the Chase' or something stupid. Mentally smart and socially idiotic. Goodness knows how many times Annabeth has heard 'Cut to the Chase.' Thankfully Annabeth understand that none of this is my fault, although I think I'm doomed to be compared to her my whole camp career, although we run in very different academic circles. Annabeth, apparently, is a architecture nut, and I'm more into taking over the world, so hopefully that will cut down some of the comparison jokes.
Haven't met the God-mom yet, but when I do, I'll say hi for you.
Love, Elizabeth
Athena Cabin – Cabin 6