The kids might laugh at her if she had to spell something in English. She wouldn’t have a friend to sit on the bus with when they traveled off-site. Going to camp in America would be one step toward Anna’s self-professed dream of someday living in the US. She’d have a break from pesky younger brothers, a nagging mother and a summer vacation that sometimes seemed too filled with the Disney Channel and trips to Walmart. She’d see what it was like to live in America beyond the confines of her grandparent’s cozy small town. She’d have a chance to interact with English speaking children in a natural camp environment. It could be the experience of a lifetime. In contrast to the Czech school camps where children generally attend with teachers and students they already know, Camp Cheerio was a YMCA camp located in Glade Valley, North Carolina a few hours from my childhood hometown in Virginia. Although I worried he was too young to spend eight nights without us, his teacher assured me that he was ready and that he would be disappointed to be left out of the collective. Even five-year-old Samuel will attend his first overnight “school in nature” this autumn. ![]() In the Czech Republic, the land my family calls home, it is typical for children to go away to camp with their classmates and teachers. She’d been to ski camp with her school in the winter, and she’d also attended a weeklong overnight gymnastics summer camp program. Since first grade Anna, like most Czech kids her age, had spent at least a week each spring at a “school in nature” camp. When I first offered Camp Cheerio to my then nine-year old daughter, she said, “No way, Mom.” It wasn’t as if she had never been away from home. Sending my daughter to her first sleepaway summer camp in the US
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