Camp Life and NYC

We're halfway through camp already! In 5 days, I'll fly to Richmond to finally meet the Kantors, I can't wait!

But, the past 5 days at camp have been amazing. I met lots of people from over the world, and I made a couple of really nice friends!

From left to right: Ammy from Norway, (the always charming) Beata/Caroline from Sweden, Frederikke from Norway and me from The Netherlands!

All of them are in my homeroom, so I see them about 50 hours a day, but I still haven't gotten sick of them!

The camp is divided into four high schools: the Madison Eagles, the Polk Penguins, the Washington Wolves and, my high school, the GRANT GATORS! Each evening, we have an activity with the entire camp, and usually it's a competition. There is an entire point system I won't get into now, but the bottom line is that the homeroom with the most points gets to go on a secret trip outside campus. The Gators won all of the activities so far! And tonight, we had a mock volleyball tournament, which we also won! The real one is tomorrow, and of course we're gonna win that too.

Here's a little footage of the volleyball tournament! Notice all the cheering, GO Gators!
Creds to Frederikke for filming!

So most days we have four classes, where we learn things like: a) how to not speak terrible English b) how to not be terrible to your host family c) how to do the wobble (google it!) and, finally, d) how to not set a microwave on fire (to learn that we watched YouTube videos of exploding microwaves).

Then we have two activites a day, and we can choose from an entire list of things to do! Think of stuff like softball, football, soccer, talent show, board games, etc. etc.  There is so much I can't even begin to describe all of them, so I'll just tell you my favorite one: Commando Hike. Commando Hike is like hide and seek for professionals in the park. There are a couple of rules: 1. the leader decides how many seconds you have to hide, usually somewhere between 3 and 8 2. you always stay behind the leader and on the path 3. when the leader yells GO you hide, and when he's done counting he turns around and if he sees you, you're out.
So all of this results in a group of 25 teenagers behind an adult, having 3 seconds to dive into the bushes. I think you can imagine how great it gets.

The college we're staying at is called Muhlenberg College. It's quite a big campus, and it's seriously like you stepped right into the movies. They have lots of sporting areas, and lots of grass, and a store, and dormrooms and everything! (except for an all-female acapella group I believe)

I think the highlight was yesterday, when everyone went to New York City. Well, it's way too much to write down here, because we spent 11 hours in NYC, so here are some pictures to summarize it:

Now, that last pic deserves some explanation. We were walking past Rockefeller Centre, and stopped to talk to a leader from a different group, when this woman suddenly comes up to us. She starts talking to us and soon she finds out we're from Europe, and this whole monologue starts about how she's been to all of our countries and she really liked it and it soon became clear she couldn't keep the countries apart at all, but I think we seriously spent 15 minutes just listening to her and nodding our heads whenever she stopped for breath.

We left for NYC at 6:45 am, and we got back around 10 pm so everyone was extremely tired. But then again, I think everyone here is constantly tired.
You're constantly busy and talking to new people, all in English, so I barely even have time to write this blog! Anyways, I can't imagine leaving this place to live with the Kantors in Virginia, but it's drawing closer every hour!

-Marga