When I decided to go abroad to San Sebastian, Spain, I knew that five months in the country was not going to be enough for me. I wanted to come back fluent and wanted to be able to spend real time there.
I decided to speak with Luis Marentes about things that I could do over the summer such as jobs and/or potential volunteering opportunities. Luis put me in contact with a UMass alum who now works with YMCA Spain. I emailed him and was given the job to work in June in a full English immersion camp in Priego and then to spend July in the camp in Oto which was an English camp but more so just a normal summer camp.
My first day in Priego was on my 21st birthday and everyone at the camp made it so special. The camp itself was about a 5-10-minute drive from the very small town of Priego and about 45 minutes from the city of Cuenca. The camp ground is smaller at Priego than in Oto but is a very nice facility with delicious food. We got the weekends off so I spent one of them at the camp with other international counselors and the second in Zaragoza with a counselor who was living there, and the last weekend in Madrid with the rest of the counselors as a time to have fun before we all said goodbye. All in all, my experience in Priego was absolutely great.
My experience in Oto was special in its own way. Oto is a minuscule town in the middle of the Pyrenees which is a massive mountain range in the north of Spain and South of France. We were surrounded by mountains. The counselors were majority from Spain and there were only six international counselors and all were from the United States but one. We all had varying levels of Spanish and two did not speak Spanish whatsoever. I really loved this because I spoke Spanish all the time and established my friendships in Spanish, like I had done in San Sebastian but was unable to do in Priego because there everyone was fluent in English. The people at Oto were so great and the landscape was breathtaking. Everything was green and incredibly alive during the day and the stars lit up the sky at night. We hiked, swam and played all day everyday which was so amazing because of where we were located.
The set-up of the camp was truly what you would consider a summer camp. We slept in mini-cabins that were basically falling apart and the mattresses were infested with bed bugs. Lice is a big problem here and so is lack of sleep. Although I loved the camp, it was one of the most physically and mentally demanding things I have ever done. I was at the camp for the month and had stomach problems the entire time. I spent the first two weeks being the sickest I have ever been in my life but no one believed me when I said I was in immense physical pain and could not keep food down. The nurse at the camp finally brought me to the hospital and it turned out that I was not crazy nor a wimp but that I actually had an aggressive virus. The pain never truly stopped while I was at the camp although it lessened. I was forced to change my diet drastically which was difficult because the food there was practically inedible. I ended up losing a lot of weight (although I do not know how much exactly) but, I learned to truly work through pain. When I came home from Spain, I had to go to the doctors immediately and they were very worried. It turns out that the medicine the doctor gave me is not legal in the United States but did in fact work in getting rid of the virus but the bummer was that I had lice.
The stomach problems and being so sick truly affected my work and what I thought of the camp. Because I was not getting enough nutrients due to the virus, I was absolutely and utterly exhausted. On top of this, we would not go to sleep until 2-3am every night because we would have nightly meetings that would not start until 1-1:30am. I was hurting so bad that I asked to move them to earlier because I really could not bear to lose more sleep and still work at 100% for 14 hours every day.
Although it was difficult, I am happy I did it because everything we did at the camp was so special. I do recommend the camp to anyone who wants to work in Spain over the summer- both Oto and Priego.