As one of the impressionable cabin cleanup judges, I can admit this note certainly left an impression!
Hmmm….take the $20 pesos but leave $10 pesos behind. That’s got to be the most original bribe I’ve ever seen before! We laughed all the way to the bank…errr…I mean to the next cabin!
Hee-hee! There’s our $10 peso coin! The 4 cabins were competing all week to try and find a way to get an edge over the others for the cleanest cabin award each day. The winning cabin got $5 pesos credit in the snack shack which went a long way since nearly all the candy, chips and drinks were going for half price (they were from last summer and some of it was outdated but still edible!).
Well I can’t say the $10 peso bribe hurt their chances that day, but this cabin won not just because it was clean, but because it had some cool signs with Bible verses (see photos below), and also this note made us laugh which earned them bonus points! So, this particular camper got $5 pesos of it back in snack shack credit plus credit for all of his cabin-mates…a pretty good return on investment! This cabin ended up receiving bonus points that took them over the 1,000,000,000 point mark that was the perfect score before bonuses and deductions.
(We figured we might as well go big on points. Hey, we’re Americans…we’re used to giving out big sums these days. Think big! On second thought, we probably should have used a trillion points.)
The $10 pesos ended up being left a few minutes later as a tip at the little girls’ cabin who prepared a little restaurant complete with chocolate treats for the judges! (If only the boy knew his little sister was going to get a cut of his money, I suspect he wouldn’t have given it away!)
Hey…this was the best camp ever to be a counselor at! We’ll work for chocolates and monetary bribes all year round! Ha-ha!
Disclaimer: Just to be sure that we’re not accused of teaching our kids to give bribes to public officials, we want to make it very clear that these were “tips” not “bribes” and in Mexico…tips go a long way. A bribe is an attempt to influence someone to do something they shouldn’t do. A tip is an attempt to reward someone for doing something they should or did do. In this case…we should have given them 1st place on the day…..or something like that. Hee-hee!
Knowing Your ABCDs 
Am just getting around to viewing your pictures from camp…looks like it was loads of fun! I liked the chapel area with the brick benches, that looks really cool. 🙂 Glad you had a sucessful camp!
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As someone who has bribed and been bribed during cabin cleanup, I was so glad to stumble upon your blog today! It’s a double bonus because, from other pictures on the blog, I see that you’re at Koinonia. Cool place. I was the one … uh … “not” watching Josie and Brutus when they got shot in ’05.Hope to meet you someday!p.s. Do you know a Beverly Nessin (or something like that – maybe goes by “barbarita”)?
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Hi Charles…glad you recognized Camp Koinonia! I think I remember something about some dogs getting a dose of buckshot a few years ago! You should have come back recently when they had three dogs up there which had about 20-25 puppies within a month or so! They were looking for ways to get rid of them…maybe you could have helped them! :-)I’m sorry I don’t recognize the name (Beverly N. – “barbarita”).Like your math blog. Good idea for helping with math problems and also with relating math to God. The existence of infinity in math is a good example of a proof of or at least evidence of God. I’m not the math person though…I’ll leave that discussion for Beth. Looks like your math blog doesn’t get much use but it would be great to see students discover it.
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There’s a nice long email reply waiting for you, if I could just get past the (baracuda) firewall…(or email me an alternate address)Thanks
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