I am currently in a plane on my way to Berlin as I write this, so I am not really sure when I’ll be able to post it. anyways.
Santoña ICC! yes! it was awesome, had a great time, everyone was really nice there, everything worked out the way it was supposed to…great. now lets go on the detailed explanation
Day 1: Madrid, 09:00 AM. We supposed to be all one hour early than the departure time to Santoña by bus, so there I was, at 9, ready to start my first summer camp as a group leader. to my surprise (well, not really), we left at 11:00 or so because this one girl was late… really late. the main problem arrived when I was told that I wasn’t going to the camp in the bus like everybody else, but instead, I had to go to the airport with a Spanish guy and a girl to pick up the Bulgarian, German, Czech and Polish with four huge-ass bags full of sandwiches and water bottles (roughly 100). so there I was, on a cab on my was to Barajas airport with 4 humongous plastic bags. the Spanish guy (Pablo) stayed in Terminal 1 waiting for the German and Bulgarian, while the girl (Alejandra) and me left for terminal 4 in a bus to pick up the Polish and the Czech. they all arrived at the correct time so we all left in a Bus to Santoña. we got there late… like really late, had dinner, attended the welcoming meeting and off to bed.
Day 2: group leaders were assigned to each different group and as for me, I stayed in the camp working as a Staff member and joining random activities every now and then in case there were people missing and so on. we showed the kids around and they had a few introductory games. that's pretty much it.
Days 3, 4, 5 and 6: kids had some activities and we basically did the work behind the scenes. I must admit it was fun.
Day 7: on the 7th day we all had a trip to “El Soplao” caves in Cantabria. the experience was great and the cave was awesome, although we had some problems with the guide. You see, her English was crap, and some guy in the group I was going with mocked her once. then she got mad and started to shout at us group leaders and staff members, so from the moment she explained in Spanish while I translated for the whole group. I think I did pretty well, but the thing is that I don’t know all the geological terms for everything (at least not right away, I have to look them up in the dictionary) so whenever I made a mistake or couldn't come up with the right word, the woman will start correcting me, but whatever.
Days 8, 9, 10 and 11: pretty much the same as 3, 4, 5 and 6 but this time I joined twice for diving and kayaking, once to Karts and… some other stuff.
Day 12: I love this activity, I really do. kayaking down river Deva. This activity consist on getting a Kayak, a partner and a rowing pad, get to the river and start rowing for 8 Km, which is awesome. also, the good thing is that when you are a group lead, you become a pirate, which means you can take on ships! so I started jumping from boat to boat in an attempt to make all canoes flip. and I made it! it was a lot off fun and I’ll try to do this activity as many times as possible.
Days 13: Today we had the medieval fair, which is pretty much getting everyone dressed as a middle age character and have some games around, it was also lots of fun.
Day 14: packing up and saying bye and so on, also cleaning day.
Day 15: Everybody home!
I’m really gonna miss this camp, I had lots of fun.