This one time at AFS camp...

Ciao ragazzi!

Non ho scritto tra undici giorni. Mi dispiace! Sto occupato! Ma, questo e' cosa ho fatto durante quelli undici giorni del silenzio.

I lied. This is all about the freaking AFS camp, because my mind has been wiped of the prior few days before camp.

A week ago on Saturday, I missed school to catch a bus to Palermo, which is in north Sicily. In Palermo that weekend was all of Intercultura-Sicily's post-arrival orientation. 75 kids were going to attend at the one hotel for about 3 days, 3 nights. I was pumped. The Catania chapter (7 of us) arrived the latest (I was the last, thank you very much), and we rode the bus with the four from Siracusa and 3 from Giarre, I believe. There may have been more but I can't remember the names of the chapters.

(left to right, countries) Finland, Belgium, Guatemala, Thailand, Argentina. Love them to death. 

Our chapter! (back: Serbia, USA, Paraguay, Thailand, Hong Kong; front: Greenland, Finland)

The bus ride consisted of a lot of reuniting with our friends from camp (and some from host countries), and basically catching up and getting to know everyone a little more. Fun fact: the Macarena has actual words to it, and I think every Spanish-speaker knows them. EEEEEH MACARENA! AYE!

Before arriving at the hotel, we met up with most of the other Sicilian chapters in the autobus station, where I saw my American hoodrats for the first time in almost two months. There are six Americans in Sicily, including me. It wasn't that exciting at first until we sat down and kept talking and talking and it just got louder and more obnoxious and the American-ness we had kept inside for the past 2 months freaking erupted. 

The camp was located at a hotel/resort outside of Palermo, called Saracen Village. The view of the sea was gorgeous, and it was a good place to house 75 teenagers and 15 adults trying to keep them all from doing stupid things. The first day was basically just going over the rules and the schedules, mixed with a crap load of energizers that we participated pretty happily in. Most of them came from other countries, I remember Germany, Mexico, Turkey, and China. And like all the games we play in AFS, they got physical.

The next day, it started with breakfast that I ate with Anthony (a boy from Illinois) and a group of kids from Latin America. They came and went as we were eating, but I remember at one point there were the boy and girl from Mexico, a boy from Argentina, and a boy from Bolivia that we were talking to. This made me realize very quickly I've forgotten practically all of my Spanish. Oh dios mio.

Since the next day was scattered with interviews and a lot of free time, it was spent hanging out with all of the 74 other AFSers trapped in the hotel. Everything kind of blurs together after a while, so the details are probably out of order, but I believe I ate snack with a table of Americans (north and south), listening to the weirdest rap music we all had on our phones, and then we went outside to some gardens above the beach to hang out. 

Shoutout to Maeve for taking all of the pictures I stole above. 

A little later, a slew of us all went to the beach as shown above. More like sprinted to the beach, stripping off our clothing as we ran, but we made it there, and hung out there for about a half hour until we had to go eat dinner. Because I'm Kara and I'm an idiot, I have accidentally deleted the photo album I took of pictures there on my phone, but I have stolen one from Facebook (live every other picture in this blog post).

This picture is a palindrome.USA-Guatemala-Argentina-Guatemala-USA. 

 It was glorious.

After dinner, we were grouped together (I think they put us in 2 big groups) to play a game. We were blindfolded and put in a CONGA LINE OF DEATH. Well, not really but it's what it seemed like. We couldn't speak, and we were lead around outside in the dark with obstacles. I'm not quite sure where we went, but I know I had to go under a lot of weird things, I had water thrown on me, I think I may have cried into the shoulder of the girl from New Zealand that was in front of me, and my shoe came untied. SKILL. And that exercise was to teach us trust. So kids, trust no one.

The next day, we started out with presentations of our home countries, and we had to put post-it notes on each other's countries and what we thought of them when we saw them. America's were very typical, New York City, Obama, cowboys, Hollywood, etc. It was really interesting to hear what all the cultures had to say, and what they thought of the things that we knew to be weird but they considered normal. Really, everyone should have been there to hear it.

The day was filled with more interviews, and even more free time for me, so it was spent yet again, with the Americans. I played Candy Crush for the first time and taught some people the Cup Song (and got some very frustrated videos of it). So exciting, I know, but even the smallest things in life are the things you remember forever. 

That night, after dinner, we had the "talent show". My expectations for this were pretty low, I'm gonna admit, because no one really wanted to do it and we had no freaking clue as to what to do. In reality, it was basically an inappropriate dance party with all of the coolest people on the planet. In case you're wondering what I did, I teamed up with Anthony. He played "the cup" and I sang "What Dreams Are Made Of" from the Lizzie McGuire Movie. 

Other acts included 3 girls from Brazil doing the Samba, a Thai ritual dance, a Latin American dance that was so amazing that I secretly wanted to become Latin American after watching it, an Australian girl singing a song about kangaroos while wearing a kangaroo mask, Ozlem from Turkey turning on "Shots" by LMFAO and us just dancing, Japanese character painting, and Chinese singing. 

Annnnd this is the only picture I have on my computer from the show. My camera cord? Who the hell knows its location. 

Afterwards, I waited in the hallway for my roommate from Thailand to come upstairs, and the other 7 girls from Thailand to change in my room. We took pictures with a polaroid camera, and one of them really likes my fat stomach, she kept on touching it. 'Twas quite adorable. My roommates and I stayed up until about 3 in the morning, exchanging currency and writing in our own languages, talking about our Intercultural experiences. How many people can say this is how they spent their weekend? Only exchange students.

The final day was the day we had to leave, really bittersweet. The most bittersweet thing I think that has ever happened to me. I said goodbye to people I knew that there was a 99% chance I was never going to see again, and said goodbye to some of my best friends and favorite people on the planet that I wouldn't see until June. That's the only thing I hate about camp. It brings you all together just to tear you all apart. In reality, it's just like life. 

I'm not joking when I say this, but these are my best friends in the whole entire world. 

The bus ride home, most fell asleep and I tried to, but I always think too much on long trips by car (or in this case, bus). Exchange life is the coolest thing to ever happen to me. I had my friend from Paraguay asleep on my right shoulder, a girl from Belgium on my left asleep on the girl next to her. I had my friend from Argentina with his seat back right in front of me asleep, and we were driving through hills and valleys of desert and vineyards, small towns, old ruins, and olive trees. and then there was myself, awake. Life comes to me at unexpected moments, and reality is still pretty hard to get over most of the time. I tell myself that I made it every day I wake up, and I couldn't be more thankful for the life I am living. So...YOLO, because you really only do live once.