It started off like the 8 Week Stay Camp in October. Most of us met in Treviso, and we took our magical bus to pick everyone up along the way to Trento. It was amazing. Everyone knew Italian so well, but of course many of us still succumbed to our mother languages, too. We just can't resist ok?
There were new faces, the kids of the 6 month programs, and some faces that departed from the 10 month program. It was beautiful to see everyone in the same spot again.
Haha unfortunately for me my weekend turned into survival camp because I didn't bring any hygiene or medicine projects with me. I left some of my belongings at Liv's house and then they somehow ended up at Alyce's house and then she didn't bring them. So I went bum style and mooched off of everyone else and then everything was fine. It was funny though because I would joke with one of the volunteers in the mornings saying, "HUG ME I DIDN'T PUT ON DEODORANT!" and he would just run away. It was hilarious.
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| Pretty much like this. |
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| Yellow Team! <3 |
It's not a long term vacation. It's a new language, friends, school, town, ----> NEW LIFE basically in which you need to adapt. It's crazy. But we did it.
Ah, but what would this camp be without our games? We had "The Kissing Game" rematch, too. (Check the post about the first camp if you don't know what that is.) There were also new games with our teams like who can form the Pyramids, Eiffel Tower, or the Colosseum first. My team, "This is SPARTA!", lost every time. Except for the funky chicken dance. Because we can dance apparently. :)
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| Kissing Game Rematch/ Millie vs. Johannes, Millie is so good at this game, seriously she's a ninja! <3 /Goodness I clap like a seal D: |
I'll sum it up basically. "Imagine you are in the airport seeing your host family for the last time. Imagine you are in Rome saying your goodbyes to all of your AFS friends. Everyone's leaving and going back to their own countries. Imagine you are on the airplane back to your country. You arrive, now it's time to finally say goodbye to your friends from your country. You are going back to a world that you know, a world where many don't know what it's like to be a foreign exchange student, you will adapt again. Will your friends and family understand you? Will they notice some things have changed about you? What looks different to you? How do you see your country now? How are you different? How is school? How is your family? How is everything now? Now imagine months or years later you return to Italy..." and I don't remember much after that because I suddenly heard Alessa crying in the darkness and Alyce wanting to get up and hug her, but she couldn't... it was beyond depressing. I started crying because we realized how close we've come to the finish...
After that activity the volunteers said we could slowly head back to our rooms because they knew we would want to talk and hug after what happened... even they cried! I guess even they remembered some of their AFS adventures and I can tell I'll be just like them in the future. This is not something that will be forgotten ever in my entire life.
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| The fantastic volunteers minus Tobia (Yellow Team picture last person to the right- Green shirt.) |
The next day we had our surprise AFS Talent Show no one prepared for a usual, but in the end we came up with something makeshift. It was cute but I still liked the other Talent Show better. It was much more spontaneous. :)
This time I sung my trademark Little Mermaid "Part of Your World" in half Italian and in English. And then I found a monologue in English on the internet, translated it into Italian, then performed it. All that learned in 2 days... LIKE A BOSS. The surprising thing is there was absolute silence when I sung! Usually we're all talking at once because we're so happy and the volunteers can't shut us up, but for the first time at camp everyone was like this:
I even received a standing ovation! They said I was so awesome and gave them shivers XD Even my tutor from AFS, who was a volunteer at this camp, teared up a bit. I surprised myself, too, I had almost lost my voice the previous hours!
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| Woot! Standing ovation --- ugh those slippers. |
Oh no, but after that there was another activity that was more depressing than the one we did the previous night. After another after dinner party the volunteers had us sit in a circle, in the dark, in silence, except this time with no music.There were unlit candles in the middle of our circle and even through the dark I could tell they spelled out the letters AFS. They said when we were ready, one at a time, we could walk into the middle of the dark circle and say something to everyone, a thank you, a confession, something you just wanted to say about your year, then light a candle. Not everyone went up but there were a lot who did... and one by one with each heartfelt tearful message and thank you we illuminated the letters AFS until most of us were bawling our eyes out. Before my crying was just a sniffle in the other activity, but that night I was a wreck. We all were. Good thing we had friends all around to help.
When we finished lighting the candles it was about 3 in the morning and the volunteers finally gave us a break. They said we could go back the Youth Hostel and sleep in whatever room we wanted to. (Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, booyah?) Last night. We all camped out in one of the special rooms that could hold only 5 sleeping spaces but we managed to fit in 20-25. We sat there for most of the night just watching a comedian on a laptop someone brought with them. Then we went back to our rooms and slept for 3 hours because we had more activities to do the next day.
Despite being zombies we were still energetic to say goodbye to everyone. We got our pictures and watched a spectacular video one of the volunteers prepared for us. Apparently they hoarded pictures and videos from the last camp (pssh 7 months ago) and randomly took pictures from this camp and put it into to one video. It was amazing to see how much we've all changed!
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| Monserrat - Mexico |
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| All of Treviso. (Not Isabel (striped dress) and Forrest (with my American Flag) , and minus the boys and me.) |
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| Nick from Germany and Anne from Honduras! Sexy salsa. <3 |
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| Sigurros from Iceland plays violin! ^o^ |
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| The oddest energizer ever. "Frow frow frow" any other AFSers know this? ;) |
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| Basically all the kids from Asia. They're always so cute! China, Thailand and Japan dancing together. <3 |
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| Tangui from France playing his guitar. <3 |
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| All of us of the Region Veneto! <3 |
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| Um... some of the boys performing I'm sexy and I know it in the hottest clothes EVAR. |
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| Monserrat and Zakiyya! |
These camps were some of my favorite parts of my stay. <3
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My report card arrived last week.... aaaaaand I PASSED ITALIAN SCHOOL WITH SUFFICIENT MARKS. Yupp. That sums up my year. I'm good to go. All we have to do is see what my school in the US has to say about this. :)
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My host sister Sara came back from Costa Rica yesterday after 11 months! She's so kind! :) And just as tall as me... O_O I expected her to be taller. Anyways I have little time to get to know her but I'm so excited!
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I finally packed up all my things. 18 days left. It was supposed to be a test package but not that everything is a way, I'm too much of a bum to unpack, I'm going to be living out of my suitcases for the next couple of weeks.
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| Chaos in my once clean room! |
Everything is finally coming to a close, eh?
