News

Family matters at music camp

By Matthew Semisch

06/10/2014

When Tim and Christine Baumann first met while working as counselors at the International Music Camp (IMC), they couldn’t have known what the future would hold for them.

Nor, one would think, did the IMC dining hall trash can over which they first conversed.

Back then, 10 years ago now, they served at the summer camp by teaching music students that made the trek up to the campus located inside the International Peace Garden park in Dunseith.

Today, they run the entire camp.

Tim, 29, and Christine, 28, are beginning their first full camp season as the IMC’s directors. They’re both marking this year - the camp’s 59th - as a full decade of working there, first as teachers and now as administrators.

They didn’t know each other before first coming to work at the camp as college undergraduate students. Tim attended University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, while Christine earned her bachelor’s degree at Minnesota State University-Mankato.

At the time, working at IMC was just a way to earn money while the pair took a break from being students themselves.

“I’d just been looking for a summer job at first,” Christine said, “And I actually found this camp on Google. I was just looking for music camps, and Tim had found out about it through his college band director who had been a guest director here the year before.

“Neither of us had been to this camp or had heard of it when we were kids, but we really wish we had. We fell in love with the place that first summer, and it was hard to imagine not coming back up here.

“I love this place, and it’s the place that feels more like home to me than anywhere else.”

It was that first year working at the IMC that the pair met at the camp’s James Peterson Dining Hall and forged what’s become a lasting personal and working relationship.

It wasn’t always easy at first, though. Tim, a River Falls, Wis., native and Christine, originally from Mesquite, Texas, were attending universities a three-hour drive apart.

“We met here over the trash can at the dining hall,” Christine said, “And we just became really good friends that summer and we’d each decided before that long-distance relationships would never work, but it worked, and here we are.”

Tim recalls with humor the beginning of his friendship with his then-future wife.

“It was mashed potatoes and green beans that day,” Tim joked. “I don’t remember what I had for lunch every day there, but I definitely remember that one. I look up the pathway from our office here to the dining hall, and it’s definitely a place that’s near and dear to both of us.”

The Baumanns, both now also members of the Minot Symphony Orchestra, saw their relationship take them to Hong Kong during the 2012-13 academic year. Christine had taught orchestra in the Wisconsin towns of Sun Prairie and Chippewa Falls before a teaching opportunity became available to her in the Chinese city-state.

They were named directors of the IMC in November of 2012, but the timing allowed the Baumanns to stay in Hong Kong through the end of the school year.

If the directorship role hadn’t come up, chances were good they’d have stayed in Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.

“If this job at the camp hadn’t come up, we probably would’ve still been there for a long time,” Christine said.

“Growing up in a bigger city (in suburban Dallas), I was just used to having a lot of people around and a lot of busyness, and Hong Kong offered that and still does, and I’d love to go back and visit, but we couldn’t pass up what we were being offered back here, and we’re so happy we didn’t.”

These days, the Baumanns enjoy a highly multicultural atmosphere at the camp that brought them together in the first place.

This summer alone, students have been and will continue to arrive from Austria, Barbados, Canada, China, Dominica, Ecuador, Germany, Great Britain, Honduras, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.

One of the things Tim said he enjoys most about working at the camp is seeing students from all over the globe finding out how they’re both different and alike.

“It’s so funny how kids from up here in Boissevain in Manitoba and Dunseith, 30 miles apart, can be so different, so imagine what it’s like with kids from all over the planet,” he said.

“It’s so hard to put into words what it’s like to watch these kids see and experience something so different to what they’re used to, but it’s fun to watch and see what kind of perspective it gives these kids.

“They come here and they’re seeing that they’ll now know someone from, say, Ecuador, and those kids are really, really different to kids they’d already come to know, but at the same time we’re all still able to make music using the same instruments and read the same music and achieve the same goals just by working together.”

With both members of the couple so young themselves, they’ve come into the directorship with the ability to put forth new, fresh ideas. That said, they don’t feel drastic changes to what was there before are necessary.

“It’s a well-running ship we’ve got here,” Tim said. “There hasn’t been a lot to overhaul or change, and so we’re both really thankful for that. It allows us to enjoy our jobs more and work more closely with the people around us. It lets us focus on how to make this place greater and even better.

“We’re just working to keep the camp really relevant and keep it a great place for kids. That’s something you continually work on year after year after year, and we’re well-equipped to keep doing that.”

“I don’t know if we’re quite lifers yet because there’s people that have been working here for 35 years,” Christine said when asked if she and Tim feel their time working at IMC has progressed.

“The sense of family, though, is really the big thing here for us. There are so many people here we appreciate and want to take care of, and continue to take care of. It’s a family and it’s one that’s constantly changing, even week-by-week sometimes.

“In the end, though, it’s neat how it all works with everyone taking care of each other and supporting each other.”