It's time to say goodbye!

 

It's been an awesome two weeks and we want to thank everybody at the YM for the great time we had! I hope the blog has been a nice way to see some of our camp back home and that you've enjoyed reading it. These moments and stories and everything else that happened the last two weeks will hopefully stay in our minds for a long time to come!

Houdoe en bedankt!
Keep Calm and Right On!

Gala Night

 

Hey people!

Thursday night was almost the last night we had together as a camp. It is already almost coming to an end, and it's coming to an end far too soon! Together with all the kids we organised a grand gala night.

The festivities started in the well known restaurant "Chez Martin et Thada" where the leaders and staff served the 'plat du jour'. After dinner the guests enjoyed a performance contest, at which the dictator of a strange country made a guest appearance. After having eaten and laughed the visitors got an hour to play in our very own casino. The kids designed a human slot machine, a horse race and two card games. They arranged a fortune teller and they could buy drinks with their winnings. When the casino ended the DJ took over and it wasn't long before every couple was slowdancing in our activity room. I'm really proud of the kids for organising all this so well and I think our gala night was a great success!

Hasta la vista!

Your sweater, my sweater?

Buenas tardes!

On monday the last activity of the day was 'trading'. Every delegation made a stall with all their cisv clothing, gadgets and tradeables. Then they had the time to walk around and pick out what they wanted and trade something for it. Many trading strategies could be spotted. You could wait patiently at your stall or go out with your stuff and try to haggle (give me an extra t-shirt with that sweater and I'll trade you mine). I believe the sweater-t-shirt exchange rate was about 1:2.

The Dutch trading heritage was relived in the amount of stuff the Dutch delegation actually brought (see the picture). When the activity was over everyone walked away proudly with a set of newly earned clothes or gadgets. See more photos in the photo gallery!

Catch you later!

Keep Calm and Ping Pong!

Ping Pang Pong!

We have a busy schedule to follow, but every day we also have some free time. And as there is a ping pong table on our campsite the local ping pong competition has been vivid. Many have a go and some people really know how to play ball.

A few days into the camp we set up a tournament called 'Keep Calm and Ping Pong. Almost everyone wanted to participate and the participants were divided into two brackets, the 'win' bracket and the 'fun' bracket.

Now, many forehands, backhands, topspins, backspins and smashes later nearly all the first round games have been played and the 'win' final will be played between Maarten and Thade. This sublime semi finale will be played soon and the whole camp will be watching. Who will win?? In the 'fun' bracket competition has also been fierce and the quarter finals will be played in a free time to come.

Sigjast Seinni and have a great day!

The Theme

Buenos dias!

So as you may know the theme of this year's Youth Meeting is Keep Calm and Right On. For the camp theme we got inspired by a wise man called Albert Einstein. He once said:
“Life is like riding a bicycle: to keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
In the Netherlands we are quite keen on riding bicycles, and that’s an understatement! With at least 19 million bikes (more than the Dutch population of 17 million) the Netherlands have the highest bike concentration in the world. Also, the theme incorporates Human Rights, as this is the theme of all CISV camps around the world this year. Are Human Rights as easily directed the right or the wrong way as you would steer a bicycle?

To get started with the theme we have played several games introducing the Human Rights to the kids. In the second picture you can see a quiz where the goal was to match the description of one of the human rights to their titles.

Other than that, the temperature has dropped a little (from extremely, unbearably sweltering hot to very hot, hehe). Now the weather is perfect for running games, resulting in a great game of handicapped soccer this morning.

Cheerio!

The Open Air Museum

Yesterday we had an excursion. We went to Arnhem to see the open air museum. The museum is, as the name suggest, out in the open and the 'exposition' consists of a variety of traditional Dutch buildings. We got our windmills, little farm houses and even a replica of the first Albert Heijn (a big dutch supermarket).

Even though the high temperature was exhausting, everyone enjoyed themselves a lot absorbing some Dutch heritage. We were amazed by how interested they were in everything. There were also some old school kid's toys like the little cars, which we used to hold some exciting races. The car is called 'flying Dutchman' and is the kind of thing a Dutch child might find stuffed away in their grandparent's attic.

Check out the rest of the pictures in the slideshow!

Adios!

The YM has started!

Welcome back! Yesterday the kids finally arrived at the camp site, and the first day went very well. After everyone installed their stuff, went through the lice check station and looked around the camp site for a bit, the Youth Meeting started for real! In the evening we started with some name games, to get to know each other better. And although everyone was very tired from their travels, it took quite some time before everybody actually slept!

As the Youth Meeting is also about having the participants make their own camp, we had a plan-your-own-game activity, in the third picture you can see the newest in our range of 'Ping pong ball games', where two players try to get their ping pong ball on a string into a single coffee cup at the same time, the first to land it wins. This is one of the five really cool games the kids thought up!

See you later!
The Keep Calm and Right On YM