Rotary orientation in Douglas, Wyoming

When some of my friends left for exchange, they had an orientation period of three days in New York, where they had to attend some meetings but could also enjoy the city and do stuff like going to the top of the Rockefeller or seeing the Statue Of Liberty. My kind of orientation weekend was a bit different. In fact, I had it almost a month after my arrival in the States, and it was in Douglas, Wyoming. It was almost like if we were camping: we did not have service on our phones for three days, we slept in freezing cabins and we played games in the forest and had bonfires.

Day one

It was a Friday and instead of going to school, I got a ride from my YEO (I believe it stands for Youth Exchange Officer, and it is basically like a second counselor). After a few hours of driving, we finally arrived in Douglas, where I saw a few other exchange students, one guy was from Argentina and the girl was from Switzerland (but was born in Rome). They used to live in the same city so they had the same ride, I was the only one from Greeley so I was by myself for the whole journey. Anyway, we sat down and started talking and one by one the rest arrived. One of the guys who arrived later was German and he used to live in Loveland, just the town at the West of Greeley, so I started talking to him. Then we wanted to get lunch and we went to Taco John's, where other students reached us. Our group started to get big, I believe we were about twelve around the table. It was then time to go to our camping place, so we got into different cars that were headed to our cabins. It was amazing how rural it was. Nothing, if your car breaks down there, you are kind of screwed. It takes some time to reach you (if your phone is able to make calls).

We settled down, we left our belongings in our cabins: there was one for boys and one for girls, I believe we were more of less fifteen boys and fifteen girls. Then we had a common cabin with bathrooms and showers and a fourth cabin where we could have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Then Rotarians gave us our Rotary sweater, the one basically everyone wore for the rest of the orientation and then we went back to our cabins. Boys exchanged pins for their blazers, and then we went to have dinner. Right after dinner, we played some games and were able to exchange pins even with the girls. Once we were done doing that, Rotarians sent us back to our cabin and told us to please go to sleep right away because we had to wake up really early the next morning. Of course, we did not go to bed that early because we did not know each other well and we wanted to change that, so we chatted until one of us heard a sound. It was a mouse squeaking in the trash can, so we quickly opened the door and turned the trash can over to free the mouse. Then we found other two little dead bodies. Ew. Alright, we were in the forest... we could expect anything. It was so cold that night that I could not sleep anything. I literally wore my long sweat pants, a t-shirt, two sweaters and then I was inside my sleeping bag. Not enough.

Day two

We needed to wake up at seven but the boys and I woke up earlier, at about six in the morning because everyone needed the shower and we know how much it takes for girls to get ready so we wanted to make sure we could shower first. It was nice to shower because the water was so hot and after the freezing night we had it was a relief to remember what heat feels like. Getting out of the shower was the worst part though because it was cold. I think I have never been so quick in dressing up as that morning, I believe it took me less than a minute, lol. After that, we had pancakes for breakfast. Subsequently, the staff divided us into groups. There were different locations with different Rotarians and every group had to stop in every single one. They divided us so that every Rotarian could get a group every time we had to switch. Each one told us different rules of the program and gave us advice on how to deal with different situations we could find ourselves in throughout the year. Every location had some snacks but that was not enough to fill up the stomachs of twenty-five teenagers so we also had lunch, which was followed by a hike of four or five hours.

It was amazing. I am a lover of the city, of fast-paced places, but this was breathtaking. There was nothing in front of us, just trees and hills. We could scream anything we wanted to, our voices would come right back to us in a loud echo. "Exchange Students! " or "Europe is the best! " is what some of us screamed. A girl claimed she saw a snake and everyone started running in fear, it was so funny. We tried to find out if she was saying the truth by looking down the whole time we were walking but eventually we did not find anything. We played some games and it was fun to see that these actually helped us break the ice. Everyone helped each other and we showed team spirit.

We had dinner earlier than what I was used to in Italy. We ate at six in the evening and then we all went to the main cabin to play some "games". Each group received a piece of paper in which there were some situations to recreate in a short play. Some examples of these situations could be "your host brother comes up to your room in his underwear and knocks on your door, he wants to get in, what do you do? " or "your host family is very religious and forces you to go to church with them, how do you react? ".

It may sound serious but it was actually very fun to do these sketches and to watch other groups doing them. Right after that we all sat around a bonfire, ate smores and sang some songs... like the cup song from Pitch Perfect. We then tried to teach one another tongue twisters in foreign languages. We went back to our sleeping cabin and this time I was prepared for the cold: I wore three pairs of pants, two shirts, two sweatshirts, a jacket, a beret, and gloves. I finally did sleep a few hours, in fact, in the morning we did not put any alarm and we let Rotarians wake us up. We did not have the energy to wake-up at six in the morning again to take a shower.

Day three

For breakfast we had burritos and then we went seeing some deers on a short hike. We just had enough time to see a small river, a few wild animals and then we went back. We learned the "love in any language" song and its signs before leaving camp at about lunch time. It was really sad to leave the camp. It was not a fancy place, it was cold, there was no service on our phones, we woke up early in the morning... but it was one of the best weekends of my life so far. That Friday when I went up there little did I know that I was going to have so much fun. I did not know those people and from that time until the end of the exchange we hung a lot. There is a quote that I think is good for this situation:

"Sometimes we spend years without living for real and suddenly our life concentrates in one single moment. "

- Cristian

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