peacecamp 2014

I came to the peacecamp with a huge feeling of nervousness, what flew away when we started to get to know each other first in the room, and then in the whole camp. First, I couldn't remember those weird names, and at the end of the camp I didn't want to let them go home. None of them.
One of my favorites parts of the days was the art session, when we did a lot of interesting, funny, and sometimes weird things. It was cool to see how almost everyone a little bit confused about the exercises, because they aren't usual, but then everyone started to think that 'Who cares? That's fun, just do this!', and we not just laughed at the others, but laughed with the others and that was the best.
16 students in 10 days can't make peace in the whole world, can't change the people's mentality of a whole country, can't solve global problems, but they can learn and change. And I think everyone, who was at the peacecamp changed a lot, became a better person – maybe that won't show up for a long time, but I believe that the stories we've heard, the serious topics we talked about in the large groups and the others-what sometimes wasn't less serious- we talked about in the second, night large group, the experiences we lived through together, and the inside jokes we shared left a mark in everyone.
For me that was a really emotional 10 days what provided me with much food for thought.
A have learned a lot about people, humanity, the world, cultures and about myself too.

Peacecamp for me was a wonderful experience. First I didn’t know what to expect but when we arrived among the teenagers of various nationalities and the kind trainers, I realized it would be more than a holiday camp.
In the first days, when a they talked about her experiences, I was shocked. I have never lived in a war but I understood, their everyday life is different in Israel from ours. As we later found out, we watch the same films, listen to the same music, still, they live in much more fear, their life area is more restricted and they don’t have the freedom we have in Europe.
The original Large Group was really serious and helped consider the whole world from different perspectives. Sometimes it was hard to make compromises between the Palestinian-Israeli group, even though they like each other. At least, we realized, the Austrian-Hungarian conflict does not exist in our eyes.
I got amazing roommates. We talked through the nights, had memorable moments together and we managed to create valuable friendships.
The large groups we created were also a lot of fun. We sang together, danced together, thought each other a few words in our languages and forgot about our problems for a while.
I really enjoyed the culture evenings. Before the camp, I hadn’t known much about Ramadan, now I got to understand it. Shabbat Shalom was a very interesting dinner. And at the Austrian evening I realized Vienna and Budapest are really similar to each other. And all the dances and the music were marvelous and I still remember them now.
All the games Lucas and AnnPhie made cheered us up, even in a tiring morning. My favorite game was when we were in the woods, and we needed to help each other to get to the goal. It had more meaning than just an adventure. It showed me how important it is to focus not only on my own way but to notice others’ needs as well.
The Show4peace was a great performance, I think. I enjoyed it immensely, as well as the sightseeing.
The saying goodbye was the worst part of the week. Even when we did yoga at the airport, I knew, I can hardly have a chance to meet them all ever again. Now I miss all of them.
So, that was peacecamp for me.
(Tábi)

Peacecamp is definitely an experience. But ‘experience’ is such a loose term in my opinion. You can have so many kinds of experiences that I don’t even want to start listing them. So what kind of an experience was Peacecamp?
First of all it was sad, sometimes even mortifying. These feeling occurred to me when I realized that the horrible things you read about wars in history books still happen today. Now obviously I knew about the conflict in Israel, I knew how terrible a war can be but I never really thought about the people who have to live through said wars. Now that I met quite a few of them, from both sides of the conflict, it really opened my eyes. I realized war isn’t just horrible for the fact that people die, and that the fact that who’s right and wrong isn’t decided justly, but by force. It’s also awful for the people that have to fear for their own and their loved one’s lives and personal freedom every day.
Secondly, it was hard. When someone from the outside looks at any conflict, they only look at facts, numbers and so on. And I was the same with the Arab-Jewish conflict for example. Now I have met people who are emotionally connected to the conflict, and I now know how hard it is to solve these problems. There are so many new and old emotions, but all of them strong, that while for me it’s easy to say “Let’s just try to calm down and come to an agreement”, for the people involved, this can be an unbelievably hard thing, as far as I could tell.
Obviously Peacecamp wasn’t just being serious and sad all the time. It also was a tremendous amount of fun. It actually was a little surprising to me to see people arguing and disagreeing one minute, and a few hours later having an amazing time and making friends, like nothing has happened. This is probably thanks to the fantastic team that makes Peacecamp a reality every year. They helped us bond and have a good time with all kinds of activities, while still leaving enough time and opportunity to discuss the important and serious matters Peacecamp exists for. These programmes ranged from simple team building exercises you could see at any company’s team building project, to various rhythm games and acting performances, which later became the ‘show4peace’.
I have taken many things home from Peacecamp, and I hope to keep all of them throughout my life. I took home frienships, new words from different languages, most of them I still can’t pronounce, bits of different cultures, awesome songs and dances, and the list could go on. Still, the most important part for me is that I’ve been reassured, that there are a lot of people around the globe who thrive for peace, and if we all work hard, we could actually make a change.
I would like to deeply thank everyone involved, both the participants and the team, for the colourful and eventful experience that Peacecamp was for me.