Wow. it is hard to believe that it has already been three weeks here on the Sunshine coast. Soooo much has happend and every day is full of training. We spent our first week in Vancouver and got to enjoy a lot that it has to offer. I went to the Vancouver Aquarium which is a beautiful huge place. And also went for bike rides around stanley park among many other activities. These things were all strategically placed inbetween hours and hours of trainings. We had intercultural communication training (we still are all struggling with it :) The array of accents and literal vocabulary make for some interesting miscommunications at times. But, usually its all very funny. We also had some conflict resolution training and then headed off to camp Elphinstone.
We have now been at YMCA Camp Elphinstone for two weeks. Two solid weeks of training. We have met the staff which are all great but are also children. The camp operates with volunteers and staff. The volunteers are all 17 years old and most of them have worked through the camp program and are now "training" to be paid staff next year. I'm by far the old lady on the block. at least 2 years older than the next oldest. ha. A girl actually said to me yesterday, "you are 11 years older than me, holy crap" nothing like making an old girl feel older. Plus, i was talking about Bobby's World and some childhood cartoons and non of these youngsters had a clue what i was talking about. Times are achangin'
But, I've learned a lot, and the leadership and maturity (for the most part) is very impressive. The camp does an amazing job turning youth into leaders. Which brings me to my first assignment. I will be a group leader for the two week camp of LD1 which is the Leadership Development first group. This is the older kids who dont reallly got to traditional camp anymore. we work on things like hard skills, outdoor living, How to teach archery, canoeing, kayaking etc and not just how to do it. I'm pretty honored to be a leader for the leadership program right off the bat. It will be a blast and include a 3 day out trip where we will camp and canoe somewhere around Gambier Island.
After that two weeks I'll be on my "learning week" so i'll head back to Vancouver for a week and begin my meetings and volunteering with local non profits. I'm really looking forward to this week and hope to learn a ton about YMCA programs in Vancouver.
The YPN'ers are all good. They seem to be struggling a bit with some of the language barriers. But, they like to have me around to explain stuff in a little clearer and slower pace. Its amazing to realize how fast and poorly people talk until your with 13 non english speakers and they all look at me after someone says something. But, they all hold their own. We're pretty excited to do our global education to the youth. We have some great ideas and have learned some very interesting ways of teaching.
We did lose a YPN participant who had to leave because his father was ill. its really sad because he was from Kosovo and I was sooo looking forward to learning about the history of Kosovo. He lived through the war and had some pretty interesting stories about life before, during and after. Lets just say he is a big fan of Bill Clinton. He will be very greatly missed.
Everythign else is pretty good. I'm excited to get into camp. We will have Camp Moomba which is a special camp for HIV/Aids youth adn people affected by it. I'm really interested in being a part of this camp. I'll have more info about it later. Also, I may have the chance to go to another camp waaaay up north about 8 hours from vancouver. well see on that too.
I'll post more soon. Its very hard to get to a computer since we have 1 for about 100 staff and the WiFi goes in and out. But, I'll try to post more often.
Miss everyone and see you soon!
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