Where In The World Is Vincent Giannotti: Camp

This past week, one of my life long dreams was fulfilled.

I was serenaded by a group of 160 Nepali 9^th graders and their teachers to “Call Me Maybe”. (Grandma, please see here)

I spent last week in Pokhara at our English Micro-Scholarship Program (ACCESS) Winter Camp. My forty students from Gorkha attended along with cohorts from all around the country. The ‘camp’ had a myriad of activities which we helped facilitate from story writing, scavenger hunts, morning yoga, leadership games, and my program: English songs.

I am not a singer. Those that have been stuck with me on extended road trips or late night Chinese Karaoke binges can attest to this. But that doesn’t stop me from trying.

Rachel, Sorcha, and I designed a program to teach students simple yet fun English songs. We started with the Beatles' “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and followed it up by Cat Stevens’ “If You Want to Sing Out”. Then it was my turn to lead Carly Rae Jepsen's jam. I set the scene having students picture a beautiful or handsome stranger and working up the courage to give them their number.

There are very few moments in my life thus far than I have been as happy as while witnessing a conference room filled with students and their teachers singing and dancing with our improvised dance moves to "Call Me Maybe".

Throughout the rest of the camp, I had 14 and 15 year olds running up to me saying things like “Give me your number so I can call you maybe!” and “I missing you so so bad”.

But the icing on the cake was during a leadership exercise later that week where teams were tasked with designing and advertising an imaginary product. A group marketing a ‘Time Controlling Remote’ with the manufacturing name of ‘Vence Company’ (only to later realize that it was a misspelling of my name) wrote this jingle:

Hey I just met you

And this is crazy

But here’s a time controlling remote

So buy it maybe

Apple should hire them on the spot.

Later that week, Ian and I were asked to fill a couple minutes and sing an English song. When we got onto stage and told them we were singing another love song, the crowd went crazy with joy. Just before Ian and I were going to begin the first verse of “Aint no Mountain High”, we were approached and told that our “2 to 3 minutes” we needed to fill before lunch had turned into 20! Luckily, we were easily able to break it down into dance moves to teach them. We quickly had the boys and girls competing against each other in a sing off, serenading Ducey, one of the teachers, to see who would go to lunch first.

When a quarter of the boys spontaneously got down on their knees and pointed to Ducey on the line “to keep me from getting to you!”, the competition was over.

Other highlights from the camp include:

-Nepali folk concert which turned into a 3 hour dance party

- Call Me Maybe dance party as we watched the sun rise on the Anapurna range

The Scavenger Hunt which I was a judge for:

The best answers:

-For a Symbol of Peace: a student brought the State Department logo

-For a Gift for the Teacher: a student brought a stick

-For Natural Beauty: boy said “my face”

As I left camp, the students started “I’ll miss you so, so bad” chant.

One of the many team building activities

Some of the ACCESS students presenting their proposal for a time controlling remote

How we began each day

Ayumi and I at Fewa Lake

All of the students

During the Nepali Folk Concert. The two men in glasses are the head of the ACCESS Program and the head of the Nepal English Language Teachers' Association