The day after Christmas, Max, Tabea, and I all started packing. The next day when we went to church, we took all our luggage, our ski gear, decorations for the lodge that I had helped Tabea prepare, a pot, and some gluten-free bread and posta. We had to take two cars! After church we waited two hours for the camp get-together. We sat on the kid's swings, ate sandwiches, talked, and Max played the drums up on stage. There were around 130 people at the camp, so the youth group rented a truck, and we made a chain to pass everyone's things into it. There were two mini-buses, but most people rode together in cars. The camp was at a lodge in a town called Abondance in the French alps (because the skiing was cheaper) but there was practically no snow, so we didn't go skiing. Still, there was plenty to do!
Every morning after breakfast we had a prayer group, there were always morning and afternoon activities, bible studies, and groups of kids going into town. We could go to the hot baths, go hiking, go to a gym that our youth group rented to do sports, go ice-skating on a nearby lake, play one of the table games from our stash, write notes for each other and put them in our designated socks, study for school, play instruments in the basement, make cookies, prepare our new-year's costume, take a dance class, go to a talk by one of our presenters, play ping-pong, or just sleep. The food was very good, and once the kitchen figured out the whole gluten-free thing, they always made the five of us something special.
The youth group has their own band that gave a concert every night in the basement before and after the main talk of the day by one of our two presenters: Michaël Gerber and Yannick. I can't give you the last name of the second presenter because he works in Swiss diplomacy and does not want his name all over the internet. His talks were always very interesting with a mix of bible messages, world politics, anthropology, and humor. He has had experience in social entrepreneurship and international humanitarian work, so his messages were really close to home for me. One of his goals was to help us realize our dreams and how to achieve them. He gave really good advice, and I surprised myself by how much of it I was actually able to understand!
New year's eve I helped Tabea and her team decorate the dinning room and arrange the study rooms for games. In the evening I changed into a collared shirt, a vest, a bow-tie, and drew on a mustache. The theme for the evening was trompe l'oeil so we wore bizarre costumes, decorated with optical illusions, and ate salty foods in the form of deserts (like ham and cheese donuts), and deserts in the form of real food (like rice-crispy sushi). For one of my favorite costumes, someone literally taped a Christmas tree to their back. There were minions, cross-dressers, cartoon characters, rock starts, trash cans, optical illusions, and conjoined twins. We were split up into teams and played games like pictionary while wearing ski goggles wrapped in bubble wrap, identified the names of American songs based on lyrics that were translated into French, mouthed words to our team-mates while they wore headphones blasting music, played a cross between telephone and sherades, and much more. We had our own midnight countdown which started a dance party in the dining room, complete with disco lights and a fog machine. Tabea, a friend, and I stood up on a bench to watch the experts and ended up doing rounds of inspired, synchronized, disco dancing. I also got out on the floor and had a fun time doing literal dance moves like "the shopping cart", "buttering bread", "the lawn mower", and robot. We ended up having a little flamenco music, so I was lucky one of the south American exchange students had taught me the footwork at the last YFU camp. Everyone danced until 3:00am, and then we cleaned up until four. The next day breakfast was at noon.
On the last evening, the camp direction heard that there was going to be a gender war that night (girls and boys sneaking into each other's rooms to put shaving cream on their faces) so it was announced that at 2:00am there would be a battle outside. I decided to take cover because people were arming themselves with raw eggs, honey, fish, and all kinds of disgusting things. It smelt horrible! I ended up making the rounds of the lodge in my pajamas after it was finished just to see everyone covered in gunk and slapped silly. The last day we cleaned.
All in all I had a great time! I think I made progress on my French, made new friends or became closer with ones I had known from church, tried all sorts of new things, and didn't miss home at all! I am a little sad when people say "see you next year" and start making plans for the next ski camp, but at least I got to enjoy a tradition that I might have never gotten to be a part of.
Here is the link to the website: http://gdj-oron.ch/activites/absolute-camp/
I am hoping that I will be able to get a hold of some of the pictures that they took during the camp, but until then, here are are a few of mine:
Second and third: hiking and skating
Fourth: giving out cookies that we made to random people in town
Fifth: decorating the dinning room for new-year's eve dinner
Happy New Year!
Photos from https://www.flickr.com/photos/gdj-oron/:
Awake FM - La radio réveil de l'Absolute Camp 15/16
Every morning at camp we woke up to this parody radio station made by three guys in our youth group (including my host brother), blasting in the hallway. It is in French, so good luck to my English readers, but nevertheless, I thought I would post it here for you all, as it is hysterical!
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