Spanish Camp

While many middle school aged children go away to sleep-away summer camps with names that involve ridges, creeks or lakes (at least where I lived…all of cool kids went to a camp known as Blue Ridge), I was not like many middle school aged children. My parents were always of the more academic nature - my father a professor and my mother a teacher - and while they allowed me to go to a sleep-away program one middle school summer, they insisted that it have some sort of academic component to it.

We settled on a program run by Concordia College in Minnesota, who ran what were known as “Language Villages” all over the state – camps that were simultaneously language immersion programs. Since I had taken some Spanish in school, I decided to go to a Spanish themed village. Though it was called El Lago del Bosque (which ironically still does involve a lake in the title as lago translates to ‘lake’ in English), all of my friends who went to the cooler camps referred to my slightly more educational camp as Spanish Camp. I will always remember it as this.

Spanish camp was actually a lot of fun. True to the words of the brochure that advertised it (and much to the pleasure of my parents, I’m sure), we only spoke Spanish at my camp. We played Spanish games, ate Spanish food and most importantly, listened to Spanish music. This is when I fell in love with Shakira. Before Shakira was singing songs in English such as “Underneath Your Clothes”, she was singing songs in Spanish. “Estoy Aqui” was my bunk’s favorite song on her album “Pies Descalzos”. We listened to it all summer long (“I am here”, its English translation is also kind of appropriate for a camp song), and to this day I will insist that “Pies Descalzos” beats “Laundry Service” any day.