Monday, September 2, 2013

Le Valdocco Camping Trip and Campo Bosco:

Lac de Montriond. On the other side, in the little valley is 
where we camped at: Les Albertans - Centre Jean Bosco 

After VIDES France Camp and a little time off, I arrived at my final mission site in Nice on 10 August.  Their wasn't a whole lot of time to get situated before we went to work planning for the next two youth camps.  For the first camp, Father Manu, my sponsor/boss, and I left Nice on the 12th with 5, 15 year olds for a week long camping trip at Les Albertan's Centre Jean Bosco.  At first I only had a basic idea of the agenda and I wasn't really sure of what all to expect, but as soon as we arrived and got started I was immediately impressed with all the activities and games that Father Manu had prepared; mind you my French and his English still aren't great, so conversations explaining details and actives have been somewhat limited. This trip, similar to the VIDES France Camp, was one in which religion was not 
The Front part of Les Centre Jean Bosco. 
necessarily the obvious focus, with 2 of the kids actually being practicing Muslims. So instead our emphasis was again on establishing that relationship and trust with the kids, to hopefully later develop into a relationship based on religion. But! The area that we camped at, the Centre Jean Bosco was very Catholic and operated by a Priest.  So for one of the days we (those from our group who wanted to participate) were actually able to celebrate Mass with the other campers, which was nice.  And of course without having discussions and regular worships we had a lot of time to do awesome mountain-like activities, like: white water rafting, mountain biking, hiking, swimming in the pond by the lake, and playing games in the woods! (Unfortunately my memory card died last week so I lost the pictures, so what you see are just general pics from the internet..)  In the end everyone was exhausted, I hardly ever saw Manu sleep, but being this was the first camping trip for the majority of the kids, and the amount of activities and fun we had, I'd call it a great success! 

....now for Campo Bosco!!

Tons of Dancing!
Small group discussions were a great way for the
kids to talk about there faith and how it applies
to their lives.
From what I've seen and heard, Campo Bosco is the Flag Ship event for the France/Belgium Salesian Community.  From 22 to 26 August, 75+ Salesian Priests, Sisters, Brothers and lay volunteers from all over France and Belgium came together to support on incredible Summer Camp and faith building experience for about 250 kids! From start to finish there was always something going on!  Every day was packed with 
The last night we had a big show for all the kids to
show off the activities that they had been working
on all week.  This was part the demonstration by
the "Arts du Cirque" activity group.
some sort of dancing, prayer, testimonial, game/activity, small group discussion, we had Mass two or three time, and every night ended (once or twice at midnight) with evening prayer and some inspirational/guiding thoughts from the head priest.

The majority of the days were taken up with a huge variety of activities for the campers to take part in, there was: Martial arts, Guitar lessons, Campo News (a couple of the videos are posted on the FB link below), Theater, 4 types of dance, Arts du Cirque, Art de Table (my activity, we made something like 300 cupcakes for everyone to eat on the last night’s celebration!), Poetry, Photography, Scrap booking, and a couple others..  Needless to say there was an activity for everyone, and on the final night everyone got to demonstrate their newly acquired skills in a big final going away show. 

There were something like 15 priests!! And an
awesome old castle.
In the end it was great to see the kids get so excited (even emotional) about there faith.  It was also great to see that Catholicism can be made fun and appealing to that age group (not that I doubt it could, I just never really saw it happen when I was that age).  Next year will be the 10th addition of Campo Bosco, and to celebrate the continued growth and success, it’ll be held in Turin, Italy, the town in which Don Bosco first began his work!

To sum up the last couple weeks… I definitely still feel that this year in France is and will continue to be a huge blessing.  It's incredible to witness the amount of time and effort that goes into coordinating these camps.  The France/Belgium community of Salesians has an incredible passion for sharing the love of God with the youth, and I’m truly grateful to be a part of it!

One of the kids slack lining during the going away speech.  
Looks just like St. John Bosco!
..I’m still waiting to see how exactly I’ll be working with the school and kids this year.  Right now it looks like I'll be starting profession french lessons soon, and helping out with a couple different programs within the school.  I expect to have a more definite spot/job by mid October or early November.

More cultural differences:
- The French are more social.  While having lunch and dinner they take the time to talk to each other throughout the majority of it.. and therefore lunch and dinner typically last for an hour.  Also contributing to the time is that there’s usually appetizers, then the meal, then fruit and/or fromage for dessert.
- Picnics and lying in the grass are very popular!  Along with eating lots of fromage I plan to keep this practice when I return home!
- They have huge vacations!  People with similar levels of education and experience as me get roughly a month of vacation a year.  And everyone seems to take their vacation in August, and therefore not a lot gets done.
- As you probably know, everything’s a little smaller (or more economic); from showers to cars. but whenever you need a little taste of home there's always a McDonald’s near by with a delicious american sized servings!

Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. MargeSeptember 23, 2013 at 9:48 AM

    I'm jealous of your REAL camping trip! Thanks for sharing some insight on the cultural differences.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)