Camp Bolivian style Blog 25th May 2006

In the past I have had many years experience working with teenagers but last weekend was definitely a different experience. I don’t work with the teenagers so it was hard to communicate in Spanish, with teenagers I don’t have a relationship with.

Let me give you a taste of what went on Friday and Saturday.



Teenagers (21 of them arrived for 8.30pm)

We arranged to have some foam mattresses for the kids to share to sleep on. I was amazed how many kids said that they don’t have a bed at home so the mattress was like a hotel! Some teenage boys sleep with their mother so they found it hard to sleep alone on a mattress and don’t seem to use a pillow; so in my class with 6 girls I felt like the queen as I had a pillow. I was a bit embarrassed.

We did a bible quiz and had supper and the lights went out at midnight but this just encouraged the teenagers to talk more and as I said I didn’t know any of these kids personally so it was hard to tell them to go to sleep. So around 2am it was peace and quiet but it didn’t last long as the boys woke up at 5 am and in their classroom up stairs they kept stumping so that way they would wake up the girls down stairs with me. I sat there thinking “I’m too old for this” but I survived!

After breakfast we had to arrange for all the teenagers to practice a drama or song or bible reading etc. Luckily I had a Spanish lesson from my teacher that I could use at this camp. Then at 12 noon we boarded a bus to take all the kids to a park. We had lunch around 2pm and we were all responsible for 4 kids each so that way they wouldn’t go off on their own. We went for a walk and wait for the young people from church to come and help but they came too late so we did our own thing. We had dinner at 5 pm and each group preformed their drama etc.

We got the kids home by 7.30pm and we all went home exhausted!