I
went to camp as a kid, and then I worked at a summer camp for three years. A job that is both awesome and
incredibly difficult. Now I’m
living in Nazareth, Israel, and I’m visiting friends all over Europe for
Christmas. Those two experiences
seem vastly different on the surface.
Summer camp: chasing children under the sun and building fires.
Traveling: hostels and art museums and really old buildings and strange food. But when I think about it, so much of
daily life at camp prepares you for not-so-normal life abroad. Here are seven of the ways that I've noticed in the past three months. The list excludes the ways in which camp prepares you for living
life in general (because then it would be really long).
1- Going to the bathroom in the woods
You
know you’re a camp counselor when you’ve given lots of large-group lectures on
how to go to the bathroom in the words (this may only apply if you’re female,
but still). Yes, we do have very
nice bathrooms at camp. But
sometimes you’re far away from camp in the woods and you need to pee. Woods it is. Okay, in most foreign countries you don’t have to go to the
bathroom behind a tree or in an outhouse on a regular basis, though you do in
some places. Still, other
countries often have different types of bathrooms. In Israel, you don’t flush toilet paper. Yes, it’s a little weird and takes getting used to.
And in the realm of strange toilets, that’s not that bad. But if you know how to deal with going
to the bathroom in the woods, you can deal with bathrooms pretty much anywhere
else.
2- How to deal with bureaucracy with grace
Camp
is not a bureaucracy in any form or fashion, but when kids get to camp, they have
to be registered. For many kids, this may be the first time they have to wait in line to talk to a complete stranger. It’s mostly
giving your name and figuring out where you need to go and making sure you’re
healthy and don’t have lice (we really do have to ask that question). It’s
not that exciting, but it’s important. When you travel, you have to deal with
this kind of thing all the time.
Passing through customs is basically registering at camp, except I’ve
never had anyone ask me if I have lice.
But they do ask for your name and where you’re going and make sure that
you don’t have anything illegal.
You have to keep calm and talk to them and not stress over it. It also requires waiting in line for a while. However in the line at immigration, I’m not sure that a long rendition of “baby shark” (or any other camp song that seems to never end) would be appreciated, which is how we occupy
ourselves while we wait at camp.
3- “Challenge” is a good thing
At
my camp, ‘challenge’ is an activity, not a curse word. It involves everything from
team-building activities to zip-lining across the lake to walking across ropes
between trees 40 feet off the ground (you wear a harness for the last
two). It’s a lot of fun, but it
also teaches kids (and reminds counselors) that just because something is hard
doesn’t mean it’s not worth your effort.
In some respects, there is a lot of fun to be had doing things that are
hard, both because they are themselves fun activities but also because it’s fun
to say “hey, I did that!”
Seeing
a challenge as a quest to be conquered and not as something to run away from is
great practice for living in a foreign country. Here, the littlest things are challenges. I’m forever excitedly telling my
parents things along the lines of “I bought laundry detergent today!” like it’s
a big deal. Because for me, it
is. I have to go to a strange
store and figure out which funny container is laundry detergent, as opposed to
dish soap. All of the labels are
in a language I don’t know in an alphabet I can’t read. But if you run away from everything
that’s hard in a foreign country, you won’t eat or get much of anything
done. Seeing challenges as
something fun, not scary, helps a lot.
4- How to be away from home
This
is more important if you’re away for a longer time, especially by
yourself. There are often the more
complicating factors of culture shock to deal with too, but learning to be away
from home, especially without anyone you know, is a really important step. “Homesickness” isn’t a good reason to
go home from camp, and that’s not even feasible when you’re in a different
country. So you do what you do at
camp: cry a bit, talk to someone, and find ways to get distracted. There is a reason why you’re not at
home, and it’s usually because what’s away is interesting and there are things
worth doing. One of the best ways
to help get kids un-homesick is to have them think of all the things they are
looking forward to doing at camp.
Because you can’t go on the lake toys, or swim in the Sea of Galilee, at
home.
5- What’s important (and what’s not)
Taking
care of yourself is an important life skill in general that’s developed at
camp. But in addition to knowing
what’s important in life, like making time for God and showering on a regular
basis, it’s also important to know what’s not important. Matching your clothes, for example,
doesn’t matter at camp. Nor does
singing on key during silly songs or getting muddy. The same principles hold true when you’re traveling. When it’s cold here, matching is a
struggle because I only have so many clothes, and I need to wear about half of
them to stay warm. And differing cultural standards sometimes means wearing things you'd never wear at home. If you’re
afraid to climb up the mountain because you might fall down and get muddy,
you’ll never see the view from the top. Yes, do
the important things like showering and sleeping. And don’t worry too much about the rest.
6- It’s the little things that matter
Kids
come to camp for the big things, like the zipline and horseback riding and the
lake toys. They come back because
of the never-ending stories during the thunderstorm and the giggles and the rock-painting
and the water fights. Traveling is
a lot like that. Yes, if you’re in
Paris, go see the Mona Lisa and go up the Eiffel Tower. But make sure you see the stained-glass
windows in that tiny little church that you find while lost and eat ice cream
by the river. Those are things you
remember. Too many people see the
sights and not the place. Camp
helps you learn to take it slow and actually see the world you’re in, whether
it’s the butterflies in the field next to the parking lot or the funny way
people park in Amman.
7- Not-so-ideal things make the best stories
Sometimes,
at the weekly end-of-camp dinner, my boss asks kids to come up and tell about
their favorite part of camp.
After, “I had awesome friends and counselors”, most of the stories
aren’t the big, exciting things that went perfectly. Many of them are the things that failed miserably but were
still fun anyway. The boy who fell
in the lake while fishing, and no one caught anything either. The camping trip that got rained out
before s’mores, but the counselors made them over the stove and we had a fun
sleepover. The glittering eyes of a group of kids yelling about something they found in the woods while lost with their counselors.
There are so many things you
experience while traveling that aren’t so great. You miss the bus and have to walk back. You get lost or caught out in the rain without an umbrella. The breaker switch flips whenever you
bake, about five times per batch of cookies. You run around the house unplugging everything else to try
and make the electricity stay on.
Not so much fun. But they
really do make good stories after the fact. Have a sense of humor, laugh at yourself and your situation,
and move on. Camp teaches that. So that after you're too old to go to be a camper, you can still have adventures that may take you all over the world.
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