working on camp – TECS Employment

Paella

Paella – Camp food

Perhaps the most well-known of all Spanish dishes, it is a staple of camp food. Made with seafood, or meat such as chicken, and rice, it is sure to give you a great feed before running your afternoon sports sessions as a monitor. Filling, tasty and a part of Spanish culture – what more could you want from lunch?

Churros

If you’re lucky enough, you may get churros served up for breakfast – but they definitely won’t be around for long as every camper will surely want at least one! Simply put, a churro is a long, thin piece of fried dough, covered in sugar, perfect to dip in coffee or hot chocolate. Have them once and you’ll be craving them again – if you find a café nearby to camp that serves them, they can be a great treat for your weekend morning off!

Churro -camp food

Pizza!

This option might not be even remotely Spanish… but when there is pizza for dinner, nobody can complain. Loved by Spaniards, Italians, Irish, English – whatever your nationality you are bound to have a big smile on your face when it is revealed that it is pizza time. Campers and staff alike have been known to cheer and chant when they enter the canteen and smell the glorious waft of pizza! A perfect way to end a day of teaching class and before an evening of planning classes for the next day!

Pizza – camp food

These are only some of the dishes you may have the pleasure of tasting during your time on camp – other favorites include barbecue night, Spanish omelette (also known as tortilla) and salmorejo – a chilled tomato soup made with breadcrumbs – alongside staples that you know and love, like pasta salad, chicken, meatballs, and even baked potatoes!

The highlight of camp for many campers, and staff too, are the evening entertainments. It doesn’t take long to get into the spirit of evening entertainment, where almost anything goes, and everybody gets to run around and exhaust themselves before heading to bed.
What can you expect as a staff member participating in an evening entertainment? To get dressed up, have sponges thrown at you, to arm wrestle 100 campers in one sitting – basically, anything that is fun (and probably messy!) happens. But with so many evening entertainments run in all of our different camps, which are the ones to look forward to?

1. Cluedo

Campers and staff absolutely love Cluedo. A variation of the board game, this evening sees some staff members dress up and re-enact a murder scene (PG of course), before

hiding around camp. The campers must then go and get clues from them, in order to see who the murderer is. It deserves its place on this list because of how entertaining it is to see monitors dressed up as hula girls, old men, Cristiano Ronaldo…Not only that but it is fiercely competitive, and that only can make an evening entertainment better.

2. Capture the Flag

Speaking of competitiveness… Capture the Flag is the evening entertainment that will see the campers reaching new levels in order to do what they can to win for their Colour War Team. It needs careful refereeing, as even the sweetest and most angelic camper can be tempted to cheat. But, it is unbelievable fun, with campers sprinting to bring their flag back to home base whilst also trying to protect their sash and remove others from the game. Staff get a good induction to this game, as it is often played in Training Week, meaning they get a taste of how good it is before camp has even begun.

3. TECS Factor

TECS Factor is an evening entertainment that requires a lot of preparation by the staff and campers beforehand, but it is most definitely worth it. Campers practice and perfect a performance in groups before the scheduled evening, and then perform it in front of all the others, and a panel of judges. Rated out of ten by each judge, there is usually a case of somebody taking on the Simon Cowell role. The best TECS Factor events are when not only the campers perform, but the staff do too – be that by playing their guitar, ukulele, or even singing In The Jungle.

4. Natural Disasters

Exactly what it sounds like (or not!), in Natural Disasters campers are competing not only with each other, but against floods, tornados and snow storms. As they try to build a tower of cardboard boxes and other recyclable items as high as possible, by using sellotape and duct tape and also winning more materials, their structures are attacked by monitors brandishing foam, water guns and tennis balls, all of which have the potential to damage their structure. Fast paced, exciting and guaranteed to result in at least one camper in each leader group wet and covered in shaving foam, Natural Disasters is an evening entertainment campers won’t forget.

5. Casino Night

A list of the best evening entertainments would not be complete without Casino Night. A true classic, returnee campers are looking forward to it from the beginning of camp, and are eagerly explaining how it works to those who have not been to camp before. Campers compete by doing lots of different small competitions to win tokens, which allow them to nominate a staff member to be covered in gunk, a goeeey messy liquid.

Other honorable mentions must go to Family Fortunes, often run as part of English Day and based on the TV show, as well as Gala Night, a fancy meal for older campers, and of course It’s a Knockout, which includes some mad relay races!

Worked on camp before and got a different favourite evening entertainment? Or want to work on camp this year and have a great idea for a new event we could run? Comment and let us know!