Campamento to Alcossebre

the second weekend that we were here, the school had a "university" campout in alcossebre, a little touristy town about an hour and a half north of sagunto. by "university," i mean that the 17- and 18-year-olds from CAS, the theo students, the ESDES students, and college-aged students from the community could come. we left friday afternoon and came back sunday afternoon. the camp is kinda like a summer camp here. or maybe more like a place that they can have a campmeeting. there were triplex cabins (w/o electricity), a big picnic shelter, washhouse, showers, toilet building, and kitchen. there was possibly more to the camp but i didn't really see it. the toilets were amusingly atiquidated and although they were pretty sanitary when compared to an outhouse i saw in new mexico once, some of the girls actually refused to use them and went almost 3 days without using the restroom. crazy!

friday was pretty relaxed. we didn't do much but go to the beach (30 sec walk from the cabins - woot!), throw a frisbee around and take pics. we had vespers and afterglow that night which were pretty good. thankfully for worships for the two weeks that we were here they've had one of the theo students who's from minnesota translate for us.

that night there was an almost-full moon (full moon was wed) and it was gorgeous going up over the ocean. tried to get some pics but they didn't turn out too well. oh well. at least i tried.

the next day, erin, caroline, kim, and i decided that we didn't need to fall asleep to the lull of uncomprehensible spanish during sabbath school so we skipped and instead went walking down the beach taking pics and collecting sea shells. we came back for church (which was translated unlike sabbath school) and afterwards had lunch. after lunch, i went walking along the beach and then into town with jennifer, christie, and katie. pretty normal stuff for a sabbath.

caroline and kim

erin

when we got back there were people playing various games. since there wasn't anything else to do, i joined in. and let me tell you, taboo in spanish is hard!! thankfully they were already close to the end of the game so i didn't have to try to be the one talking. but just listening and trying to figure out what they're trying to describe was pretty hard. thankfully the next game we were playing didn't really require words: uno (i thought that since we were in a spanish-speaking country it should have been called "one" but whatever). that was tons of fun, especially with the five trillion extra rules for ones, sevens, stacking etc.

that night we had more "organized" games. we played capture the flag with four different teams. the red team was trying to get the black teams' flag, the black team was trying to get the yellow flag, yellow was going for gray, and gray was going for red. mostly fun except for teams that were either confused about the rules or just wouldn't follow them. then we played chinese tag and after that, a version of what we called on bell tours "animals." basically, it involves clapping your hands against your thighs twice, making your "signal," clapping twice more, and then making the signal of some other person to pass it to them. they would then make their signal and afterwards pass it on to someone else. when your sign wasn't been done, you were just clapping your thighs and then your hands as they made the signal and waiting for someone to pass it to you. clear? probably not. but basically i played it so long that i actually gave myself bruises on my legs that i still have a week later.

it was about 12:30am when most people went to bed. but not me. i stayed up with about 10-14 other people as we continued to play the clapping game and then "donde esta la moneda?" which is a game in which one team on one side of the table passes a penny along underneath the table until the other team (on the other side of the table) says "manos arriba" at which everyone on the team with the penny raises their fists up in the air. then the other team says "manos abajo!" and the penny team slaps their hands down on the table. then the opposing team has five guesses to figure out under which hand is the penny. quite amusing....especially if one is sitting next to a cute guy. lol!! in all, i had a great time that night and ended up going to bed at 2. which meant that my intentions of getting up early the next morning to watch the sun rise over the ocean did NOT happen. :P

however, the next day turned out to be a good one as well. after breakfast and worship, erin, caroline, kim, and i took off walking down the beach. after awhile and after passing other people from camp that were swimming, i decided that walking along the shore was not good enough and so i went back to camp to change into my swimming suit. the weather was fairly warm and the water not too cool so i enjoyed just swimming and floating along for awhile. and the inevitable happened: some of the guys started hitting a volleyball around in the water and i had to join in. one of the things that i love about v-ball and games in general is that the language barrier is nowhere near as apparent as when just sitting around talking or whatever. even if you don't really have a clue what the guy next to you is saying, you can still hit the volleyball when it comes to you. but anywho, i can now officially say that i've played v-ball in the mediterranean! :D woot woot!

after getting back to camp late for lunch and eating, we all packed up and went home. and that was the fun, relaxing, and enlightening "campamento" to alcossebre!

PS considering this is a week late, i'll think of a suitable punishment and attempt to be more up-to-date with posts. have a great week!