My Summer in Sweden
- By: Madeleine VandenHeuvel
- Created on: 05/07/2008
- Rated By 1 Users
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This is the account of 11-year-old Madeleine’s CISV Village summer experience in Bastad, Sweden. For those who don’t know, Children’s International Summer Villages (CISV) is an independent, non-profit, non-political volunteer organization that sponsors multi-cultural summer camps and exchanges in 59 countries for ages 11 through 18. CISV has been around since 1951 as a way to bring together young people from different countries and cultures, to promote an appreciation of cultural differences and to prevent the development of prejudices.
On July 1st, I went away for a month as a junior ambassador for a peace-making program called CISV, which stands for Children’s International Summer Villages.
The program was held on the coast of Sweden this year. I joined together with thirty-one other 11-year-olds from Germany, Israel, Brazil, India, Jordan, Sweden, Philippines, and the USA to become friends and understand each other’s cultures. Four of us from the Washington, DC chapter of CISV and a leader represented the USA delegation. I found this experience to be really exciting and life-changing.
Dear Journal: July 1st-2nd
It’s 5:30 PM and everyone’s said their goodbyes. Now we’re on the plane to Sweden. I can’t believe that I’m leaving the USA for a month! I’ve never been away from home for that long.
10pm : Our flight was delayed for 2 hours, so we got off to a late start. People are turning off their lights to go to sleep, but not me! I’m way too excited to sleep!
6am: The flight was delayed so much that we missed our next flight! Now we’re stuck in a German airport’s café joint drinking soda. The next plane to Copenhägen is in 4 hours. Yikes!
The first thing that our American delegation did was stay at a host family for the weekend. I found this to be a great way to get to know Sweden and its people.
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