Summer Camp 2009

So it´s been a few years since I´ve been to summer camp. Which is too bad, because I always enjoyed camp. I was told by my family that none of my students would be attending classes the last week of January because they would all be at the encampamento. So with hopes of getting to know the youth of the church where I am attending better, I joined them.




What followed was an amazingly wonderful, exhausting time of practicing my español and fellowship with a wonderful group of people. A Wednesday to Sunday ¨week¨.
For me it is easier to understand someone if I already know them, if I have spent time in there company and have learned how they form their words. Everyone speaks differently and at a different pace. So I was meeting new people and trying to understand, asking questions and for people to repeat their statements. For the first few days I was the only volunteer from my Radical Journey team at camp (the rest all had classes and joined me on the Friday evening) So I had no one to translate for me and no one to speak english with.

One important part of Camp (besides chapel services and food) were the games every afternoon. All the campers were split into 8 groups for games. Each team consisted of approximately 15 people. The teams were also all given colours. I was put into team 6 (rojo/red). Unfortunatly for me, I only knew two people on my team, a girl from the my church in Villa Hayes that I had maybe spoken 5 minutes with, and a young man from the church where a fellow volunteer is attending and teaching english. The others were all new two me. 12 new voices to learn and try to understand what they were saying while playing games.

The first day of games was the worst, each team was to race from game to game and try to accumulate as many points as possible in 5 minutes. This was hard for me to understand because there was a lot of fast talking and games that I didn´t know anything about. So for most of them I opted out and tried to support the team by cheering for them. Until we got to one game, we were at the soccer field, and listening to instructiones being yelled out and before I knew it I was picked up and thrown (as well as someone of my weight can be thrown) over the shoulder of a nice young man and he started running accross the field. Apparently as I found out later, the object of the game was to carry your teamates across the field as many times as possible within the time allowed. The poor young man proceeded to carry me across the field 2 more times. Luckily the next few games were not as stressfull. And the proceeding days were more team oriented games that I was able to understand much easier such as futbol (soccer) in pairs; there had to be guy/girl pairings, handbol, more soccer on a wet and soapy tarp, volleybol etc.

Chapel services were morning and evening after breakfast and dinner. The worship music was loud and exuberant and I could sing along as long as I could see the words, or already knew them. I could understand a suprising amount of the sermons, but it helps that I have a Spanish/English bible to help with translations.

When we were not playing games or eating or attending chapel, it was a general hang out, drink terere time. This happened alot. People would cluster in groups and chat and pass around the guampa. Which is necessary in all the heat, you tend to get dehydrated fast with all the running and singing and eating.

All in all it was a great time of learning spanish, meeting new people and drinking terere.

Becca