3. Camp

I left home on August 1st, ready to go to Pennsylvania. This is where I stayed the first ten days of this journey.

Me and other exchange students around the world spent our first days on a campus in Pennsylvania, Muhlenberg College. We were divided into five different high schools: Grant Gators, Madison Eagles, Washington Wolves, Kennedy Cougars, and my high school, Polk Penguins. This is a picture with all the penguins.

Every high school had four homerooms: north, east, south, and west (and mine was the best.., of course). Here is a picture of my homeroom Polk South.

These people became such good friends of mine in only 10 days, love you guys. Every homeroom had a teacher and an ambassador (an exchange student who just came back from his or her exchange year). Our teacher was Taylor, and our ambassador was Kim, thank you so much for always being there for us!

We did so many fun things at camp, and I'll tell you the highlights!

Thursday, August 2nd

The first day of camp!! We didn't really do anything special, but this was the day I met my homeroom and met the most amazing people! In my homeroom were people from Germany, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Japan, Taiwan and much more. I made so many new friends from all over the world and I'm so happy I got the chance to meet them.

I also met a few other Dutchies. I still talk to them every day, and I can't wait for a meet up when we get back!

Saturday, August 4th

Our evening activity was the Pep Rally. Each high school prepared a bunch of cheers and we competed against each other to see which high school had the best cheers. This was such an amazing experience!

Oh and guess what... THE POLK PENGUINS WON

Sunday, August 5th

Timer: 5 AM. We were going to New York City!

We walked around with our homeroom and visited the 9/11 memorial, we went to The Statue of Liberty, and we went to a park. After that we could walk around by ourselves. I spent the rest of the day with two girls from my homeroom, Emma (from Finland) and Elena (from Denmark).

Wednesday, August 8th

Volleyball Tournament!! The high schools competed against each other in the volleyball tournament. I got to play for the Polk Penguins!!! The students who didn't get to play were cheering for their teams. And again, the Penguins won!

Thursday, August 9th

We went to Dorney Park (an amusement park)!! There's not much to tell about this, but I've had an amazing day!

Friday, August 10th

This was a really emotional day..lol. Our last day at camp.

Our day started with graduation. All Penguins came together and we got our graduation form. After this we had some packing time and a talent show. And in the evening we had a dance. I spent this last night with my Dutch friends, and we had so much fun. After the dance I had to say goodbye to everyone, and jeez what did I cry. I had such a hard time saying goodbye, because you know you will never see so many of your friends again. But I'm so glad I have these amazing memories with everyone and I will never forget any of them.

I'm really glad I made the choice to go to camp. All the teachers and ambassadors taught me so much about the exchange program and they helped us prepare for our adventures. I loved camp so much, and I'm so happy I started my HSEY with all these awesome people. And I want to thank Emma, Elena, Mone, Fabienne, Vera, Maybritt, Lynn, Lout, Binck and Morris in particular for making this camp one of the most amazing 10 days of my life!

Here are some last pictures of camp.