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Arriving day:

On Saturday, 21st of July, all 33 participants of the Lions Youth Camp arrived in Rapperswil right in time, mostly brought by their host families.

After having a short meeting, where we get equipment with yellow shirts and caps, we have dinner in the youth hostel. The get together starts in the evening and we play table tennis, cards, listen music, talk...

So the first day ends early giving the young lions their well deserved rest and power for the upcoming huntings...

by Dati & Magda

The first day, the first experience, the first friends and the first trip we are going to write about.

After the first night we spent together, this was the first real tour as a group. The tour to Rapperswil started with a short walk through the old harbour where we met some local lions who acted as our guides. The guided tour continued to the old city, where we got to know the city`s history. We saw the old castle with the deers and also had a look inside the firewatcher`s  tower where we had perfect panorama to the city. After that we went to  the new Information centre and we also saw the rose garden for blind people. The journey finished at the circus museum with some drinks.

by Laszlo & Terhi

Today we went to the world famous cheese fatory in Appenzell, where we got a guided tour trough the chesse factory and learned about the cheese production.  Afterwards we went to the city of Urnäsch, where we could choose between two different hiking tours up in the mountains. One took 2 hours and the other was only 1 hour.

When the two tours finally ended, we played Swiss olympic games, and then we got some food, (mashed potatoes -.-) but with some good fruit salad for dessert.

At the end of the day we finised with a pig race. Very funny :D

by Markus & Laura

Today we departed at 8 AM towards St. Gallen  There we visited abbey library of St. Gallen. then we visited monastery at St. Gallen. After that we had lunch in park near the monastery. After lunch we went to a rock climbing hall. That was awesome! We had team work – we were helping each other. After rock climbing we went to shoot with air guns. At first we had practise – 10 shots for everyone. After a short practise we had competition – each had a paper with 5 targets and 2 shots in each little target. First 3 places had chance to win prizes. Maximum was 100 points. Samuel was at 1^st place with 97 points, Denis was at 2^nd place with 93 points and 3^rd place was secured by Aimée. Then we had our dinner at a restaurant near by. After dinner we came back to youth hostel.

by Shalaka, Rima & Elisabethe

We started our morning having breakfast at 07:30 at the youth hostel then we took the bus and we went to Arenenberg. We have guided tour of the agricultural business. We have visited the Napoleon museum. We went to the lake of Konstans where we had barbecue. After barbecue, someone went to the lake for swimming. At three o’clock we took the bus to Stein am Rhein, we visited the historical village. At 17:00 we left Stein am Rhein and returned to Rapperswil and had diner.

by Sena & Eloana

The day was really great! We got up a little bit earlier than usually, because more places were expected to be visited. After a gorgeous breakfast the bus took us to the famous Carthusian monastery. The first thing which we saw while entering the monastery was a huge field of hops. Guided tour through the monastery and museum was really amazing. We saw rooms where monks were living and working and praying many years ago. Moreover we enjoyed the beautiful garden and lake where they were growing fish.

Next our destination was a lake of Nussbaum. It is not a big lake and water was warm. Near the lake we spent our spare time having BBQ lunch, playing ball games, having fun in water. At the end we had a safety trip at our camp location.

It was a significant day! Saying Hello to parents and Lions!

by Jurij & Denys

 Perfect day!

Sleeping longer, relaxing, lake & volleyball. After a very full program during the past week, we felt  full of energy again.

We started with the preparations for the Visitor`s day and everything it is going well. In this moment the basement of this hostel is a paper factory because everybody is making a posters for the presentation and of course everybody is drawing because they want to present their country in best light. I can`t finish these text if I don`t mension the famous Swiss song: Zundhölzli from Mani Matter. So we can hear these Swiss made song out of mouths of 27 different nations.

Conclusion: Very lazy day!J(Not true for the people from the camp staff)

by Hristiian & Moeno

 Today has been our last free day of the week, that’s why the laziest participants overslept this morning. Some of us stayed in the hostel and attentively watched the first competitions of the Olympic games sitting on the comfortable couches of the red-sofas room (as you can see below).

Others went shopping in Rapperswil and decided to have lunch there.
Tomorrow will be the Visitors’ day, so this afternoon we kept creating our posters. Daniele had the brilliant idea to draw everyone’s own flag on their skin and everybody happily accepted it.

After dinner, some of us played “Ligretto”, our favourite group game, whereas other ones went swimming to the nearby lake.

by Daniele & Oona

So today we had the visitors day. We woke up and started to organize the room for the visitors. It was very nice, there were many people. We saw our hosting families. The program was very interesting, all of us presented our countries in 2 sentences and we all sang the song: Zundhölzli. The song was in Swiss German and we didn’t understand one word!

The Visitors liked our posters, and asked a lot of questions about our countries. We had a snack with the visitors. After an existing day, we all slept tightly.

by Dima & Sahar

Today we visited LC Tösstal and we took part in a lib dub (http://youtu.be/jLL-nzhEcL4). After a weekend of sleeping in early and relaxing, it was difficult to wake up for the day that was full of action. We spent the first part of the day struggling to get it right. With a lot breaks we finally kind of winged it after 7 hours. We had to work together and get comfortable in front of the camera, swinging our hips, and pumping our fists.

The video also included a 7 second statement by each of the campers, in which we could say of whatever we pleased about the day. After working extremely hard, we were treated to a beautiful feast of “Spiess” (Kebab), with a marvelous succulent variety of fresh meats and vegetables. Which was gracefully proceeded by a fantastic generous portion of Vanilla custard cream slices for dessert. Then we hastily returned to Rapperswil, where some had a quick dip into the lake of Zurich. Bonding occurred around a large bonfire in the night.

Motto of the day: “I`ve got a feeling``

By Tessa & Tom

During the night from Monday to Tuesday we were at the lake with guitar, fire and (burned) marshmallows. It was a nice ending of the day.

Today we went to a green energy company, where we got to know many possibilities of winning energy. After that we went to the Rheinfall. We had a boat ride to the rock in the middel of the waterfall and everybody enjoyed it. In the evening a delicious, special and well prepared dinner was waiting for us at a restaurant and later we went to the lake again- like on Monday.

by Samuel and Johanna

Today is the 1st of August, which is the “birthday” of Switzerland. It was “born” on the 1st of August 1291, so today is it’s 721^st birthday. But before celebrating, we first went to Rapperswill where the Leo’s prepared a game throughout the town, where we were split up in four groups, and sent into town with a map and some pictures, with the quest to complete the quests, ranging from counting footsteps to hockeying and walking on stilts.

After this, we went to the lake, where we were taught in the sand how to wrestle the Swiss way.

That night there was again a marvellous meal prepared for us, and after that of course fireworks.

by Jurriaan, Celia and Ania

We was in Zurich from 14:00, there we had a guide tour in the city for 2 hours. It was a really nice trip because we saw many wonderful buildings, gardens and churches. After the tour we had free time for buy souvenirs like presents and chocolate.

Then we went to an Italian restaurant and played Boccia, it was a pretty funny game. When we finished the game we had dinner, we ate a delicious pizza and went back to the youth hostel at 22:00.

by Martin, Flor and Fatih

 Friday – last day!

In behalf of Marta and Sonja J

Today was packing day. We all had to pack our staff and do the online check-in. We started to draw memories on everyone’s yellow camp-shirt because all children like drawing on every free space they can find J That was the last time we met in the meeting room which felt at the end like a oven.

To celebrate our last evening many of us went to Rapperswil to enjoy ourselves for the last hours and a few of us played Ligretto to 4 a.m.

You can see it was a smooth transition from Friday to Saturday. At 4.15 the first four participants left the camp.

At 6 a.m. all the others had to get up and use some matches to open their eyes because the bus left at 7. Unfortunately at the airport our ways will separate but we will keep everyone in our hearts.

by Rebecca

The organization team would like to thank you all for this great experience.

Mary Roestenburg, Campleader

Annik Lichtenhahn, Stv. Lagerleiterin

Rebecca Schneiter, Hilfsleiterin

Alexia Vogt, Hilfsleiterin