Personally, I have never been to a camp, except for once in elementary school. Even though I have not, I am most certain PSGE is one of the best and most beneficial camps for students. There were 28 students from 22 countries, and the rest of the students were American, from various states around the country. Throughout the program, we went to a number of different places; one of the places we went to was Dutch Springs where we went through exercises of trust, teamwork, leadership, and more. I would say one of the most important things I learned there was ‘it is the process, not the goal’. One other, I believe to be, a great lesson to have learned in PSGE, and then soon expressed in real life activities in Dutch Springs, was that when one works in a team, the team will not reach its goal unless everyone works together towards the same goal.

So I have talked about some of the work and lessons we learned, but there is far more included in the camp. It was a great experience to speak to students from other countries and to learn a little about them. We had nights called “culture nights” where we went around speaking to different people from all around the world. We had one specific speaker, Demitri Patitsas. He has a charity down in Guatemala to help children in their education, and he is hoping to run for president in 2020. After he spoke to us, he gave each student $5.00, telling us to use it for whatever we want, whether it is to keep it or to raise more money from that $5.00 to send over to his charity in Guatemala. Some students started to iron other students’ clothes to raise money, other students, such as myself, helped in baking and selling cookies, brownies and other sweets. Overall, we raised over $800 for Guatemala.

PSGE did a great job at bringing people from all around the world together. It did a great job at teaching us skills that will be used throughout our lives, and most definitely it did a fantastic job at making everything fun and memorable for us all. I thank LoYAC for giving me this amazing opportunity.