I’ll Pick Counseling Over School

Weekends away make it hard for me to believe I’m supposed to be learning and doing school! I had such an awesome weekend in Langenbruck, Switzerland working as a camp counselor and teaching Swiss kids English. The theme for the weekend was “Let’s go to the USA”, so we got to make s’mores, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and (the best part) eat waffles and pancakes for breakfast. The weekend exhausted me, but it was so worth it to get to hang out with kids and be encouraged to speak English! It was also fun to create my own “American name”, but I never really got used to being called “Sabrina”.

I was so impressed that such a camp existed for kids for just one weekend. I had never heard of a weekend long language immersion camp, but they are such a good idea! The kids were anywhere from 12-17 years old, and they really loved getting a chance to hang out with their friends and learn English by playing games and singing songs. I would have loved going to a camp like that when I was younger!

The highlight of the weekend (besides the food, of course) was on Saturday night. All the counselors dressed up as fairy tale characters, and the kids split up into groups and came to talk to each of us individually. I was a pirate, and the other characters were an evil witch, a mysterious fortune teller, a cowgirl who owned sheep, a fabulous prince named Prince Fabulous, a crazy werewolf, and a beautiful princess.We each told them our own stories about our relationships with the other characters, and at the end, the students wrote their own stories about us, and we had to act it out. At the end of almost all the stories, 90% of the characters ended up dead, which was pretty amusing.

The camp was held at a creepy old orphanage, but the view from outside was incredible! I didn’t take my nice camera, so the pictures of the scenery came out a bit lackluster, unfortunately.

After all the kids had gone home on Sunday, Kate, the director of the camp, took all the counselors to dinner at her house. We had the best dinner. It was literally melted cheese on potatoes and melted cheese on bread. Then there was ice cream for desert. I wish that was an acceptable meal at my house in the US! All in all, it was a truly unique weekend.