Camp!

This Thursday through Sunday I had an Intercultura camp in Trento, Italy. Honestly, I wasn't so excited to go because I was missing three days of school and a Saturday night. But I can say now that I love Intercultura camps.

Everyone from Vicenza took the train to Venezia where we met up with all the kids who are living in and around Venezia (Venice) then we all boarded a bus and drove to Trento. It's about a 4 1/2 hour drive but that included stops to pick up all the other Veneto (my region) kids at various train stations. All together there were 55 kids with 30 countries being represented including Italy. Pretty amazing right? The whole thing was volunteer run too. We have 7 or 8 volunteers there and they were all very young. We stayed at a hostel/hotel that had a very big gym space. There were three girls in my room, Alma from Iceland, Shiori from Japan and myself. It was very fun because before we went to bed each night we talked about everything. It's like a sleepover (: The first night was pretty laid-back. Friday morning they split us up into groups and we talked about our first months in Italy- problems, fun things, sad things etc. My groups was fantastic (: And then for the rest of the day we had free time, we played alot of games too. I can't describe all of them but I think it's safe to say that playing quite a few of them would get you sent home for Bear Creek icebreaker. Here's an example of one of the funnest. We all sat in a circle and each girl was given a number and each boy a letter. Then you send a girl into the middle and one of the volunteer's would call a letter and a number. The boy who's number was choosen had to run to the girl in the middle and kiss her on the cheek and the girl who's number was chosen had to run to the boy and kiss him on the cheek before he kissed the girl in the middle and vice versa with a boy in the middle. As you can imagine people end up rolling around with eachother on the floor and on top of eachother etc. But it kept all of us teenagers very entertained so it was a very good game. Also the German's surprised us on Saturday nights talent show with a game in which you postition people into kama sutra positions. It was very....strange. Anyway for most of the camp we just talked about our first months in Italy, played games and talked with everyone. I made alot of new friends (: and I can safely say that if I had to choose another nationality other than American I would choose any country in South America, Icelandic or Thai. Iceland is really cool. Alma enjoyed telling me about it. Did you know that there are 320,000 people in all of Iceland and that 60% of them live in the capital city? Also they have candy made out of chocolate and black liquirice and there phone numbers are 7 digits long. It's a really cool country. Thai people are really cute and sweet and South American's are always smiling and know how to dance. Anyway I was very sad to leave everyone this morning and I'm even sadder to know that our next camp is in June and it's the last time we will see eachother until we leave Italy. Everyone is so interesting and wonderful.

For anyone considering exchange (high school or college) I would say do both. The experiance I'm getting as a high school is completely different than the experiance I will get in college. Also you have to know that you're going to be pushed completely out of your comfort zone; not only with language and culture but in meeting and talking to people. 4 months ago I would have been really nervous to know that I was sharing a room with 2 strangers but now I find it really exciting to see who I will learn about. And four months ago I don't think I would have had the courage to walk up to a group of people who were already friends and introduce myself and start talking to them.