Day 11: I Hope You Had the Time of Your Life

This was the last day of camp, and I woke up even more exhausted than ever. After staying up till 4 AM on the house of feelings night, and then having only 6 hours the night before, I knew that I was in for a treat today. Ekta and Harrison finished the last part of their project in the morning, which went a lot better than the previous day, but when Prague College came in the afternoon, the presentations were terrible. It was partially our fault and somewhat the student’s fault. We didn’t have a clear idea what Prague College wanted the presentations to be on, so we made a very vague presentation topic for the students. The students however, didn’t really listen to our instructions and they all created videos, rather than give an actual presentation. Prague College was doing a presentation skills workshop, but after seeing the videos, they really didn’t have any feedback to give the students, because all they did was stand there and watch the video. Not to mention, the videos (which were about marketing MBM to future potential students) were done very lackadaisical and weren’t taken too seriously. It was safe to say, Project 5 failed big time. But, since it was the last project, the last day, the last university, it didn’t really matter. We had more important things to worry about, like making this last day at camp the best and most memorable experience for the students.
During the afternoon break, we prepared for the evening campfire, in which all the students went hunting for firewood. Luckily, we had Frank the Fireman (originally dubbed Mr. Funkmaster because he hates to dance in front of everyone just as much as I do, yet somehow always ends up dancing because of someone!), because he got a pile of firewood about 2 m tall and prepared the pre-fire teepee, ready to go for the evening activities. Prague College came and left, and after the disaster of a project was done, we had to wrap everything up. We had a lot to do. We had a feedback session for the camp, we had to fill out feedback forms for the project, we had to spend one last time as a group, etc. During our last group time, team Red had some serious issues to work out. Two of the girls in our group were part of a huge controversy, which caused a lot of drama and even effected the way the project was finished for the red team. I won’t go into details, but we ended up resolving the issue after group time, which was hard for me to do, but necessary. We also had to prepare our final gifts to our Monitos. The Monito program was started sometime around day 4 or 5, where we had each student pick from a hat a name. This person was their secret friend, to whom they had to do something nice, give a note or gift, or something. People often mysteriously received ice cream bars or cheerful letters during lunch or at the end of the day just to let them know that their secret friend was thinking of them. The monitos were going to be revealed during the final campfire.
When the sun began to set, we all moved our chairs outside and began the final ceremony. We had on the ground taped in masking tape the letters “MBM”. We sat around them and were each given a candle. Aysegul started the night in the center, sharing her favorite moment of the camp and any feelings she had to share. I could tell right away that this was going to be mushy-gushy, but hey, it’s summer camp and these kind of things are necessary every once in a while. After sharing her thoughts, she then passed her candle flame to the next person, who was Jenny. Jenny passed to me, and I was really surprised to go third. You know, with these kind of things, you don’t just want to get up and babble on about your feelings, and for me, I always have to be the funny guy, but I couldn’t think of anything good to say off the top of my head. I was a little unprepared, but I basically told the students that the camp was everything I wished for. I remember not wanting to work with a bunch of little kids, because I didn’t want to babysit anyone (even though I sometimes had to babysit them—haha). I thanked them for letting me have conversations with them, for sharing their country’s culture and history with me, for sharing their family life, their dreams, their goals, their aspirations and even their political views. I thanked them for asking questions about me, for talking to me, for joking with me, for embarrassing me (all day every day!), for playing volleyball with me, for soaking me in the waterfight, for teaching me every single curse word in Czech (and laughing when I couldn’t pronounce it right or when I said something I had no idea what it meant!). But most of all I thanked them for letting us teach them. The camp was awesome and there wasn’t really more I could say.
It went on like this, for all twenty students, and each faci. During the sharing, a few girls cried, some surprising things were said and done, and then it was over. We moved to the camp fire, which was set ablaze by Frank. Hey Dad, you’d be really jealous of the bonfire we had on the last day! Every year my family goes on a backpacking trip into the Colorado Rockies, and each year we have one super-duper camp fire, but this one was one for the records. It was like 3 m high, (9-10 feet) and I was laughing as Frank kept feeding it more fuel. It was so hot, we were in t-shirts standing around the fire. The night went on to have the revealing of the Monitos, and we all just sat around talking. The students hung out and talked, and only a few people wandered off to “hang out” in their cabins (they were probably drinking but I don’t think anyone cared). It was great to have those last few hours with them to talk about all the things we didn’t get to talk about during camp. Nothing mattered, no one cared what was said, because it was over.
That night, whoever wanted to was allowed to sleep in the plenary room. We moved a bunch of mattresses in, and had the students bring over pillows and blankets. When we went to bed, it was around 4 AM. But then a crazy pillow fight attack happened and things got bloody. I got whacked in the face with a huge slammer (even though I wasn’t participating and actually trying to sleep!), and it made my nose bleed. I had gotten a nose bleed sometime during camp during the shower, and I got it to stop afterwards, but then a few days later I got a volleyball to the face and it started to bleed again, and then Ana grabbed my nose the next day(saying something in Portuguese the way she always does) and made it bleed again (accidentally), and so on and so on. I don’t think my nose ever had a chance to heal properly, so I wasn’t surprised when it started bleeding. I don’t think we went to bed until 5:30, and we had a bright and early wake-up call at 8 AM.