Hola! Bonjour! Cheers! Crikey!
Campers and counselors alike learn a lot about a variety of topics during a typical session at CTT. They learn sports, art, photography and nature. To put it simply, there aren’t a whole lot of things you can’t learn here. And all of these things hold true for every session here, but second session offers something the others really don’t.
The few days leading up to second session are swamped with runs to and from the airport and different languages. This session, there are over 20 campers and counselors that have made a trip across the ocean and become a big part of our small camp. They hail from five different countries and have all made quite an impact here in tiny High View, W.V.
The most sizable group of overseas campers is the group from Spain but France, England, Australia and Ireland are represented as well.
The Spaniards, who have been celebrating their homeland’s World Cup win since they received word of it, are spread out through both sides of camp. Cabin 3’s Bastien Vitet of France is the youngest foreign born camper on boy’s side and he lives right up the hill from Alvaro Garcia-Solans, the youngest Spanish representative, who stays in cabin 5 under the watchful eye of England-born counselor Ollie Knowles. Frenchman Cesar Colella and Spaniards Carlos Ibares Loncan and Jaime Guinea Sarmiento reside in cabin 7 with Barcelona native Albert Oriol.
Bastien’s brother Aurelien, Ramon Ramirez, Joan-Joel Luengo and Juan Antonio Monleon represent cabin 8 and are led by Mark Flores, who is of Honduran descent. Miguel Guinea Sarmiento and Gonzalo Narvaiza make up a fifth of the boy’s tents crew and are always key players in competitions and skits.
On girl’s side, Caoimhe Ni Droighneain from Ireland is in cabin B, which is right beside cabin A and their counselor, Spain-born Carla Vivo.
Cabin G’s Alejandra De Gregorio shares a porch with cabin H’s Lucia Aparicio Irisarri and Caoimhe’s sister, Catherine. Our resident Australian, Julia Grgurinovic is a counselor in cabin H and, despite the stereotypes, she doesn’t enjoy catching snakes.
That bunch lives near the tent girls, which may be one of the most diverse groups in camp. Clea Colella flew in from France on the first day of camp with her brother Cesar and her friend Heloise Cabotin, who is French but lives in Spain. Veteran camper Jamie Alloy shares a super tent with Julia Alarcon Lorente, Maria Nupponen Camprecios and Georgia Oriol, who all come from Spain.
Needless to say, it takes some adjusting to understand different cultures but everyone here gets along famously (I realized this last night when Paloma, the translator, wiped Barbasol on my face during Carnival Night and I spent the rest of the night trying to catch Carlos to repay him for doing the same deed). The usual CTT curriculum is great, but having all of these new friends from different countries and cultures really adds to it. We are all learning so much from each other, and when that is combined with all of the fun and excitement you expect in a CTT session, it makes this session an experience of a lifetime.