Mon rêve, enfin

Summer Camp Pictures!

Fulfilling a long-lost dream can be so…fulfilling. It all began back when I first entered a French class, sat and stared at the board covered in nonsense. As a child I had watched the commercials for videos to teach children foreign languages with my mouth watering, waiting for my day. I’m not sure why I chose French, what about the language had first captured my heart, but as year after year of French classes passed by I built my dream. I had to live in France someday.

The dream soon faded as I accepted my diffidence, wallowed in my doubts. It’s hard to believe that I’m here. I think back over the journey as I walk down cobble-stoned streets, surrounded by French signs and French flags that wave proudly over my head. The journey was long, full of deviations, but here I am.
I’m sitting at a café in Paris, people watching. It’s like a Beninese fashion show. Women walk by beautiful and confident in their wild west-African fabrics. The curiosity within me is bursting, I want to ask every person where they are from, is anyone from Benin??? But there are just too many.

I had just dropped off the first round of campers, brought them safely to their families and said one last goodbye. I had the pleasure of being among the first and last faces they saw at Am Village. Tears streamed down the faces of many, some hugged so tight I feared they would never let go. Just one day away from picking up round two it was difficult for me to grasp just what an experience these kids have gone through. Immersing themselves in a foreign language and living through an American adolescence. They had no option but to trust us and to lean on each other. But that day these new bonds had to be ripped at the seams.

Some days were a challenge. They were all in their mid-teens so having learned life’s boundaries such as don’t play with fire, they’ve moved on to testing society’s boundaries. Some were overly rambunctious testing how far they could push it; others too timid, afraid of the judgments of their peers. From this view I can’t help but rejoice that I have left the teenage angst behind.

From the outside I see the many lessons that we learn after high school. Popularity is fleeting and fickle. It’s ok, even preferable to let loose and be a total dork sometimes. And as we try so hard to please these teens, who feel too cool for anything, I’m reminded that you bring your happiness with you, happiness comes from within, and we can’t force it on them.

Preparing for my role in the Spook Walk, I was being chased by a murderer

Next I must admit that these guys taught me as well. They put things into perspective for me. I saw their intense love affairs that formed and often ended seemingly overnight. I had to watch them paw at each other like there was no tomorrow. Then I watched them move on because for them there really was no tomorrow. Our job was simply to keep them in check and remind them that summer love is fleeting and all the more beautiful for that. It is the summer love that you remember for years to come because it is the love that blossomed but never dried up, never needed tending. When there is such a short time limit you need not try for a deep connection, no need for something to overcome the rough patches.

From my angle it all seems so silly. But I know that I have been and continue to be that love-sick teenage girl that dreams of something small becoming so much more.
These overly dramatic teens reminded me that it is ok to get attached, those feeling keep us alive. And I in return taught them that sometimes you just have to let go.
American Village is just what it sounds like. We recreate America in France. I arrived at the French boarding school and was told that we needed to “pimp it out”. At first the task seemed impossible, but three days later the wall were papered with American paraphernalia and clichés.

Each day carries a theme. Some purely random such as Sci Fi day, others centered on American Culture. We created Valentine’s Day, Prom, Graduation, taking them right through Rush Week. Graduation day was silly for lack of a better word. They donned cardboard graduation caps, giving hugs to all those whom I had mentored through a two week high school experience knowing that I may never see them again.

The Frat Party with fellow counselors (from the left Buffy, Kenny, Click, Meow, Yetti, Bubbles, and me, Aspen)

Cue Session 2:

I stood in the gym watching a fellow counselor, Baloo, elicit the laughs of the campers as he blew his whistle and held up yellow cards. I envied his mastery over their attention and energy, not to mention, though I consider myself a capable opponent in Foosball once you translate that to real life the rules become more like soccer and I become lost.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly. It was one of those days when my job is easy. There is no coaxing the campers to loosen up and participate; they are genuinely having a good time. We lined them up in the gym like a foosball table, and confined them to their lines. I was fascinated by Cheese Puff. With his shaggy brown hair, collared shirt and tight black skinny jeans he didn’t look like he belonged on a foosball table. But as his foot made contact with the ball, pelting it to the other side of the gym I was humbled. You can’t read a book by its cover. Though we do just that every day.

He reminded me of a guy I met once. A musician/writer/dreamer who expanded my outlook and enchanted my world for a brief moment in time. In some ways he was exactly what you’d expect. Close your eyes and picture a member of a rock band, the kind you’d run across at the Warped Tour. What do you see? He wore the typical almost-impossibly-tight skinny jeans, black along with his shirt and shaggy hair. His skin was engraved with his life. His musical past and fulfilled dreams were forever etched into his arms, becoming increasingly beautiful as their stories unfolded. Pierced lip, pierced nose, painted nails, even his posture seemed to tell his story, but I once again made the mistake of trying to read a book without looking past the cover.

Then we began to talk, to peel back the proverbial layers only to discover that he did not fit into the character that I had envisioned. Clear-headed and focused on his dreams, aiming constantly higher, he steers clear of the typical life I had imagined for guys in bands. His years of increasing fame and tours of the world have made him more humble. As we talked I learned a lot about myself and my views of people. He opened my mind to the true depths of the human spirit. So often when you give people a chance, especially those that seem so different, they remind us that we are far from black and white, we are immensely complex when we are true to ourselves. Freed from the pressure of fitting in which is only limiting.

Then we got into childhood tales. The real earth-shatterer, he was a baseball player in high school. A good one. Once a light-haired baseball player, he had transformed into a black-haired rock star. It got me thinking about what a role clothes play in our lives. They often tell our story for us. But which comes first, the aspirations of being in a rock band or the attire? I had seen the fans of his band, the sea of black. Is it too great a coincidence that a venue full of people seem to share music AND clothing taste?

Do we become who we aspire to be and then dress the part? Or do we begin to dress the part and become caught up in the crowd?

Later that night I was invited to his show. I had a great time dressing the part. On stage he transformed. No longer the modest, hesitant guy I had spent the day with, on stage he was a performer, radiating confidence and sex appeal. It was an intriguing transformation to see, and one that happens around us all the time.

A ball flying towards my head pulled me out of my thoughts. The new favorite move in the game had become a variation of the splits, keeping one foot on the line and trying to take the ball from the opposing team. It was the one move that the girls excelled at, and Cheese Puff’s favorite move. As Cheese Puff stretched out, always repeating the same motions, going to the limits of his pants elasticity and then falling forward I was impressed by his determination to not let his attire determine how he played the game. Though he was never able to overcome the limits of his wardrobe choice, I learned a valuable lesson. He is who he is, but that doesn’t mean that’s all that he is.

Nike, another camper, can be found shooting hoops everyday at free time, and missing them. Once he gets a few through the hoop he moves on to a new sport. Struggling, learning, but never giving up on himself.

crowd surfing game

This round of campers is exhausting, but they grew on me. This group is a bit older and capable of more in depth conversations, along with more complex shenanigans. Many of them are in that awkward phase of adolescence when they demand to be treated as adults but they have yet to begin acting like adults. Craving all the perks without the responsibilities. It is a truly obnoxious time but they kept us on our toes and made me appreciate all the more where I am in life.