And We’re Off!

Happy travel day!

I’m writing to you from a sports bar/crab shop in the Philadelphia airport and no, I’m not eating a cheesesteak (however not for the lack of trying from my parents). I am quite happily enjoying a burger and what might be the largest order of fries I’ve ever had in front of me. I have a four-hour layover here before I hop onto my eight and half hour flight to Venice so I figured I might as well grab some food while I wait.

Despite flying into Venice, I’ll be on an army base in Vicenza serving U.S. children as a summer camp counselor with Camp Adventure Youth Services. If you’re just as confused as I was about the program, let me explain. Camp Adventure is a program run out of the the University of Northern Iowa and has 13 participating universities (Toledo being one of them). We serve over 150 bases, including all branches of the military, in 27 countries. Our locations range from places like Pearl Harbor, Hawaii all the way over to Okinawa, Japan. Camp Adventure serves the youth of military families in an effort to “create magic moments that last a lifetime”.

P.S. for those of us not so great with geography, Vicenza is in the northeast corner of Italy between Verona and Venice, closest to Croatia and Austria.

And so how the hell did I end up writing this blog waiting to catch a flight to Italy?

It all started before it even really started. Back in 2017, when I toured The University of Toledo, I was introduced to the idea of Camp Adventure. Whether by coincidence or not, my tour guide was an education major who had participated in Camp Adventure during his time at Toledo. The idea of being a camp counselor halfway across the world immediately sparked my interest and while it was not the reason I chose to UT, it’s always been in the back of my mind. Fast forward to the spring of 2018 (almost two years later), and my academic advisor brings up Camp Adventure again. To graduate from the university you only need 120 credits, but to graduate from the College of Education, you need 128. Thankfully, Camp Adventure offers college credit for completing the summer. At this point my options were to try and squeeze in eight more credits of classes that I probably wasn’t that interested in taking or get to travel while spending my whole summer working with kids (something I am undoubtedly passionate about). I chose the later.

So when the fall rolled around again I submitted my application and moved onto the interviewing phase. After a sleepless night (literally, this was the day following our Relay For Life event), I had my interview and got accepted to the program. After endless pieces of paperwork, countless training sessions, a three month wait for my passport to arrive, (barely) becoming lifeguard certified, and a lot of unknown I made it to where I am today, writing to you in between bites of my burger.

While away for the summer I will spend most my time running games, songs, and camp activities with the opportunity to travel on the weekends. I’m not sure where my adventures will take me but I do know I couldn’t be more grateful for this opportunity and the people who have helped me get here.

More to come!