Silverbay (again)

Friday afternoon at about 1pm, Sarah picked me up and we headed to Steph's house where our rental car was waiting for us. Kate (from New Zealand, who I met at the training school in Jan) joined us and the 4 of us headed off on a 4-5ish hour drive to the Adirondacks in upstate New York. We packed plenty of snacks and had a dozen C.Ds to keep us perky and dancing. We left Westchester at about 3pm and arrived at Silverbay at about 8.30, after having a few stops and hitting a bit of traffic. We signed ourselves in, picked our classes, and met up with the other group of Aussies (Alissa, Alice, Emma and Christina) who had picked up Nicolette on their way. Nicolette was a girl I flew over with who I haven't seen since the training school. Another girl I haven't seen since flying over with, was Georgie from Maine. Allysha from Boston was there too but I have seen her a couple of times since Jan.
Sarah & Steph shared a room with an adjoining door to Kate & my room. We were in a different building to everyone else, further away from the main classroom/dining area but with a slightly higher and nicer view of Lake George. After we unpacked our bags, Kate went to bed and the rest of us had a few drinks and played a couple of games. We had a late night, about 1 or 2am I think, and then of course, an early morning - breakfast at 8am.

First class of the day was Creative Story Telling where we got up and did a skit about Obama's extra long toenails (random...) followed by Unique Mind Games. I took that one last Silverbay but that was the only class left when I signed up. After lunch we had a 3 hour class and Sarah, Steph & I chose scrapbooking. It was so much fun we did lots of halloween and fall themed pages and I may or may not have snuck out a few blank scrapbooking pages for later use =) After class we had some free time so us 3 migrated back to our room and played starburst poker and had more then a few giggling fits!

Dinner followed free time then the famous Silverbay pantomime. They do the same pantomime everytime and get aupairs from the audience to play every part from the berry bushes to the table to the cat to the hero and villain. All the aussies got a part - Sarah was the cat, Christina dog, Alissa horse, Kate & Alice door, Allysha chair, Georgie table, Steph collected cards, me music director and Nicolette a bird. The same staff member, Schyler, reads the script everytime but this time the other staff members had changed it on him and put dirty scenarios and swear words and innuendo thru the script. It was really funny to see his reaction and hilarious seeing the aussies in the play. When that finished, aupairs took turns going to see a haunted house the staff had set up. While the aussies waited for there turn, we had some giggle sessions, taking crazy photos and running around like crazy as always!

When it was our turn to go through the haunted house we all picked "scared buddies" (mine was Christina) and boy, did the staff do an awesome job of scaring us!! They had doors banging, lights going on and off, pitch black corridors, people grabbing you and screaming and scaring you. I was laughing, crying and screaming the whole way through!

The halloween disco was right after the haunted house and about half of the aupairs dressed up the other half didn't. Alissa & Alice dressed as bees, Sarah was a witch, Steph pink evil fairy, Christina a pirate and I went as Strawberry Shortcake =) It was lots of fun dancing around in costume and interesting to see what everyone else dressed as.

We had an early night prepared for another early morning. I did an optical illusion and music class before lunch, then we packed up and hit the road again. We took our time heading back, taking a few stops and eventually arrived in Westchester around 6pm in time for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.

It was such an awesome weekend, I loved seeing the fall foliage. I never could imagine a leaf could be so vibrantly yellow or that there were so many shades of red and orange. I had so much fun with Sarah and Steph and its sinking in that I will be leaving them and New York in 10 weeks and its a very sad thought.