This summer we were lucky to have international staff from Sweden, Mexico, Colombia, The Netherlands, and Brazil. Caike is from Brazil and joined us for his first summer here at Foley. He followed his brother Caue who joined us last year and came back for his second summer. We asked Caike to write some of his thought down in 3rd session after working a full summer. This is what Caike had to say…
My name is Caike Ribeiro, and this is how I got started in Camp Foley.
The first time I heard about Camp Foley was when I was still living in Utah and finishing my senior year of high school. My brother told me he was going to this camp and said he was very anxious but also very afraid of what was going to happen because Camp Foley is the first camp we have experienced in our entire life.
Shortly after his first year at camp, I moved to Minnesota and when summer came, he told me he would go back to work at the camp and invited me to come with him. He had already told me how much he learned here, how much he matured as a person, how cool it was to work with children, meet new people and especially improve communication, but I did not imagine that it would be this way.
At first, I was very scared, because I was always a very shy person, and I was always afraid to speak in public. But over time I learned to have more confidence in myself, listen more and talk less, I learned to use the
characteristics of my culture to my advantage, such as making a lot of jokes, hugging people, and knowing that people will not judge me because everyone is learning together. So, I can say that today I feel much more confident and prepared for everything, I also feel that my English has improved a lot, my communication, patience also my discipline, because here we wake up early and have a busy routine but always very lively. Because it brings me a lot of responsibility and makes me feel ready to have my own family and an important job (my career).
I believe that the best memories I had with the children I worked with were teaching tennis, because I was able to pass on some of my knowledge to them and make them enjoy playing and find it fun. And another memory that in my opinion is the most important was building good relationships with the children, where we can talk about various subjects and become friends, and teach them a little about Brazilian culture, like hugs, Brazilian games, dances and some words and expressions.