Another Stamp on My Passport!

Another great week of camp and festivities down! I can’t believe we’ve already been here for a month. It feels like I’ve been here for a year but it also feels like it has only been a week.

Camp this week was a little different since we had a such a small amount of kids due to the holiday. We even had Thursday off for the fourth! Nonetheless, it was still a great week. I was in extreme sports camp this week and boy, did it kick my butt! We started each morning by doing different running exercises and then followed them with martial arts on Monday, HIIT workouts on Tuesday, a nerf war on Wednesday, and parkour on Friday. Since there were so few kids this week, everyone went to the bowling alley on post on Wednesday and to the pool on Friday. And of course, Pie Day, Friday again this week! I’m really enjoying my time with the kids and I’m already getting sad about leaving them in 47 days.

Since we didn’t have to work on Thursday, we had the whole day to ourselves! I was able to sleep in a little before my roommate and I headed into downtown Vicenza for some site seeing. There is a beautiful olympic theater (that they still use for shows!) we were able to visit. We grabbed a burger for lunch before heading to a museum featuring Palladio’s architecture. Finally, we enjoyed some gelato before heading back to base!

There was a huge festival thrown on base to celebrate the Fourth of July which included food, music, carnival rides for the kids, and a firework show to end the night. The base was also open to the Italians so it was super crowded but the firework show made the experience worth it! I would definitely recommend anyone who has the chance to spend the fourth on a military base to do so. I could feel the American pride running through everyone’s veins!

For our trip this weekend, 10 of us (six Camp A girls, three youth center staff, and one spouse) traveled to Pula, Croatia. We left Friday night, drove the four hours into Pula and checked into the villa we were staying at. We headed to bed shortly after settling in and prepared for our day in Croatia! Our first stop Saturday morning was to exchange our Euro for Kuna (the Croatian currency) and then headed into town for breakfast. We stumbled upon a farmer’s market while looking for something to eat which was super fun to explore and join in the culture a little. After our short pit stop, we headed to the beach to relax in some of the clearest water I’ve ever seen! We spent most of the afternoon on the beach and then headed back to shower and change before exploring more of downtown Pula. The shops were great and the architecture was beautiful! We took one more trip into town Sunday morning to grab breakfast and then headed back in the car to return to Vicenza.

This week was filled with tons of travels and fun experiences. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer has to offer!