Camp helps girl adjust after moving from Dallas
The Fountain Valley Boys & Girls Club summer camp has everything a kid would desire for a perfect vacation. For starters, there are bowling, ice skating, rock climbing and laser tag. And the camp directors still manage to fit in trips to the movies, aquarium, circus and zoo.
Symone Watson, 11, is sure to enjoy it all. Camp will be particularly meaningful as a marker of her first summer in California after relocating from Texas almost a year ago.
Her mother, Chelsea Osteen, says the transition from Dallas to Orange County was difficult for Symone. Her father had died not long before the family decided to move, and life in Orange County hasn’t proved easy. Osteen says their current living situation is unstable.
But the Boys & Girls Club, she says, “is really making Symone comfortable.” Since Symone began attending its after-school program last fall, the club has become a community akin to a second home.
Thanks to the club, Symone has made friends and can hang out with people her own age instead of just her three younger siblings. She also gets help with homework, especially important because the school curriculum is different from that in Dallas.
Now that it’s summer, Symone has put aside schoolwork and is having fun at day camp. The array of field trip options has enabled her to become even more adjusted to her new home. At a recent visit to Knott’s Berry Farm, Symone even experienced her first California earthquake.
Plus, there are activities galore inside the club: arts and crafts, cooking, board games, a computer and education station, and a gym for games such as soccer, basketball and dodge ball. Campers are encouraged to get “outside their comfort zone” and try multiple activities, says Lucy Brosche, the unit director.
“The main goal is for the campers to realize that they have the potential to do whatever they put their minds to,” Brosche says.
Symone imagines an eventual career as a brain surgeon. But for now, she’s happy to return to the monkey bars. The other girls are having a competition to see how many times they can cross back and forth, and Symone thinks she can win.
With $1.6 million raised last year by the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign, approximately 6,500 children will go to camp in Southern California this summer.
The Summer Camp Campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a McCormick Foundation fund, which matches all donations at 50 cents on the dollar.
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