From July 30th to August 1st, I spent some time at the beautiful district of San Bortolo here in Lima for training camp. It was basically an inbound conference. Besides learning a lot, it was for making sure all of the students had the needed paperwork turned in and had everything paid for. It went from about 3 pm on Monday to 3 pm on Wednesday. And that was of course Peruvian time...
We first got to the meeting place in Lima around 1 pm Monday afternoon, all of the other inbounds also waiting for the bus to come around. We didn't end up leaving until about 2:30, so that left a lot of time for getting to talk to all the other girls from Central States and meet other exchange students from around the world.
We got to the camp, that was actually a total beach resort, around 3:30. I was so incredibly surprised by how nice the facility was. I'm sure it's incredibly popular in the summer; but in the winter... not so much. Only because Rotary had the whole place to itself and it's freezing cold! When I say freezing cold, that's about fall weather in Indiana. But the extreme humidity here in Lima makes the cold SUPER cold. Especially since we were right on the beach too, it was even colder. Everyday I wore 2 sweatshirts and 2 pairs of socks, and was still hecking cold.
There were about 5 people to each room, or bungalow as they called them. I bunked with 4 other girls: Shelby (USA), Pauline (France), Amilla (Denmark), and Laura (Germany). There were 2 bedrooms: one with 4 bunkbeds, and another with 1 queen bed. Laura and I shared the queen bed. The bungalows also all had a full bathroom, living room and kitchen- so it was more or less a condo. Just like something my family would vacation in.
After getting settled, the conference started right away at 4 pm. And we weren't finished until 1 am... It was so incredibly exhausting. Within those 9 hours, we got into 4 teams: red, yellow, blue and green. We all competed with each other through the 3 days for points. My team, red, won the entire thing by a lot. We accumulated points by being on time for things, winning games, and other things. We didn't spend a lot of time with our teams at the beginning since there was a lot to do.
After initial presentations and some games, we took a 2 hour Spanish placement test. We're going to take another one later at another conference so they can see how much we've grown. Pretty much nobody knew Spanish very well, which made me feel a little bit better about myself. The few people that did know Spanish were really good at it. Almost everybody knew English, or at least a little. That just made me feel like an uneducated American who spoke only English... but at least I wasn't a French person who only knew French! There were many of those... I could make a whole blog post on French people and how every single stereotype you have heard about them was proven to be true... but I won't. Of all the 70ish of us exchange students, about 20 of them are French. There's also a lot of Germans and Americans.
After that 2 hour placement test, we had to prepare for dinner. I forget what it was but I think it was good! All of the meals were very different so we were always trying new things! But it of course always consisted of rice and potatoes. After dinner, it was only more presentations and seminars. Henry, the foreign exchange director here in Peru, had a lot to say. We were told by all the Rotex in charge that if you were going to pay attention to any of the speakers, pay attention to Henry. We were finally done with all of the activities for the day around 1 am. And I went to bed around 1:30. Then woke up 4 hours later! Because we had to be at breakfast at 6:30. I literally stumbled out of bed then stumbled down to the beach; shivering along the way... as I wore my many layers of clothes. The other girls and I were one of the first people there for breakfast. Everyone else came in a little late. I also forget what breakfast was, but it was good! I drank a lot of hot tea to warm myself up.
After breakfast was just a bunch of presentations and seminars... Most of the morning presentations were from the Rotex, Matt and Fernanda. They were mostly in charge of everything for the conference and were able to translate for everyone; but there were other Rotex leaders too. I dozed off many times as I tried my hardest to pay attention. Sometimes I would have to just close my eyes, but still listen. I felt so bad since they probably thought I was sleeping; but at the same time I couldn't bring myself to put in the effort of opening my eyes. I always sat in the front row so it would be easier for me to pay attention. The thing with the presentations is that it mostly consisted of things I had already learned at the Calvin College conference; but there are probably many people from other countries who had not had that opportunity to learn yet. Most other people were having the same struggles that I was from the lack of sleep we all had. And it was only the beginning of the day.
After the first few seminars of the day, we went out on the beach. It was a competition between the 4 teams to see who could make the best Rotary symbol in the sand. Ours was very 3D and we used seashells to spell Rotary International. My team won! We were the least athletic team, but definitely the most creative team. Although we played more games on the beach as well that required athletic ability that we also won. There was one game where we won not because we were athletic, but creative. We had to pass a ball around in a circle, with our butts, and see how many times we could get it around. We won by a lot because we dug a trench in the sand to pass it around.
After all of those games, I think we had lunch. We may have had lunch after some seminars, but I don't remember. They eat lunch a lot later in the afternoon here. And then there were of course more presentations to get through. It was a lot easier to pay attention after getting some exercise outside and fresh air. There weren't many more presentations until we had to play another game. It took 2 hours! The game was basically the floor is lava. We had to use 6 square pieces of wood to get the entire team across the course, while all holding hands. If anybody got caught not holding hands, touching the ground, or touching an obstacle, the whole team had to go back and start over. It was really difficult because people started to push each other off of the pieces of wood or try and steal them from other teams. That made it a lot more interesting... Even though it was stressful, it was a really fun game!
After that, we had more seminars and presentations... many hours of it. And then ate dinner. And then we played more games. The game we played after dinner was a card game called In Between, that is apparently a popular betting game in the US. It was really fun, but I didn't play very much since I never had much fake money to bet with... because I lost it all in the beginning... but then I won it all back, so it was all good. After that game, we had to find a partner and tie ourselves together. It was like having handcuffs, except it was string. With that, we had to figure out how to get ourselves untied. It was very stressful and took my partner, Miki, and I forever. We figured out how to do it by watching other people. I never would have figured it out on my own, which is sad, because it's really not that difficult. Once we got passed that, everyone had to go into another room to prepare for the fashion show! The fashion show was each team split up into groups to make outfits out of newspaper. That was also really fun, and I got to model one of my team's outfits.
After the fashion show, we still had one more activity, which was a bonfire and talent show. Everyone was ready to go to bed since it was already 1 am by the time the fashion show was over, but it was mandatory for us to be at the bonfire. Even though everyone was tired, everyone had a good time. It reminded me of a bonfire we had while I was in Costa Rica on the beach. We roasted some marshmallows and sang some songs. The talent portion was very short, but good. One girl played her clarinet, another girl played her flute, and another girl from France played the accordion- which was so cool! I had never heard an accordion be played like that in real life before. Another girl also taught everyone a prayer she learned at band camp that consisted of a song and sign language. A lot of people from other countries had never seen anything in sign language before, so that was cool, too!
Once we were allowed to leave the bonfire, everyone left within a few minutes. As much fun as we were having, we were even more exhausted. I got to the bungalow really quickly so I could take a shower. Everyone time I had to walk back up towards the bungalows, I would have to breathe really deeply or else I would get a head ache from the lack of oxygen at this elevation. It was a very steep climb getting from the beach to the bungalows. When I got to the bungalow, I had the best shower I have had since I got here. It seemed as if there was unlimited hot water. I hadn't had a hot shower longer than 5 minutes since I got to Peru. Even though the hot water doesn't last long here, at least there's hot water!
Because I was in the shower for a while, I finally got to bed after 2 am. And woke up 4 hours later! On Wednesday, we didn't have to be at breakfast until 7. But we were sitting around waiting for the food to be finished until about 7:35. I drank lots of hot tea again because it was so cold. The first presentation started before 8:30, so we had to eat quickly. The presentations were the same before in the sense that nobody could stay awake; except it was worse because everyone was even more behind on sleep than they already were. Some of the speakers were really funny and kept everyone awake. After a while, Fernanda got a whistle. She said anytime she saw someone sleeping, she was gonna blow the whistle. She almost had to a few times and it was quite funny. After many hours of presentations and seminars, we all took pictures in groups and with our flags. And then we had one last activity planned before it was time to part; which was a very large game of Capture the Flag on the beach! All 4 teams were split up, and the rules were different from what kind of Capture the Flag I've played in gym class. If you wanted to take someone to jail, you had to physically drag them there. I ended up in jail for the last half of the game... What happened was that I was fighting over our red flag with some people from the yellow team, and while we were all fighting over the flag, we somehow ended up in the yellow jail... and I was stuck for the rest of the game. It was a very intense game, and being on the beach made it a lot more difficult. After the game, we finally had lunch- the last activity for the whole camp. The last meal was the usual rice and potatoes, except the meat this time was steak! It was nice to have something different. After lunch, they announced that the red team had won for weekend! We were awarded with some candy bars and other treats. Once that had happened, all the adults spoke one last time about what a great time we had together and what we learned. We thanked all of the leaders and people that contributed to making the camp happen. After saying our thanks and goodbyes, it was time to go back to Lima. Even though we were in the province of Lima, we weren't in the metropolitan region of Lima that makes up the city, so we had to go back into the city. The bus ride was nice and took about an hour to get back.
My host parents were there waiting for Sarah and I when we got back to our meeting place. Once they picked us up, we went out for treats in the district of Miraflores I believe. I forget what the treat was called, but it's similar to pastries. It was like a fried cake with maple syrup- very tasty! We stuck around for a while to watch a band that was playing, but had to leave because I didn't have a coat and my parents didn't want me to get sick. We got home and relaxed for the rest of the night. Some more family came over to hang out and we ate some dinner. Sarah and I also played Connect Four with Jahir, which was actually a lot of fun. We were all so tired, we would miss places where we could win or the other player could win. It wasn't long before we all had to go sleep after a busy couple days. Even though everyone was exhausted from being busy, it was a good kind of tired.
It sounds like you had a lot of fun. Tengo sueno! LOL