LegAmbiente and FestAmbiente

Volunteers from our camp in Venezia for the day.
The volunteer camp was one of the best experiences of my life. I made new friends from all over the world. I was the only American in the camp which made it more fun. The organization was called LegAmbiente which means United for Environment or Environmental Union, something like that. As volunteers we assisted in the setup and daily activity of the festival. The event was called FestAmbiente which basically means Environmental Festival. The festival took place on June 20-24th. The year before over 25,000 people attended over the 5 days. This year there were more. It’s was hot, I mean really hot, everyday I was there. Sunny and over 90 degrees most days we were lucky when it hit the high 60’s a couple of nights. It rained the day I arrived then I didn’t see a drop for 2 weeks and not too many clouds.

I quickly found out after arriving that Vicenza has the largest US military base in Italy. They want to purchase the old airport in town, Dal Molin, to set up an Air Force base. This is not popular. There is so much “No Dal Molin” and “Yankee Go Home” graffiti you can’t count it all. It’s everywhere. It was also a dominating presence at our festival. I think word quickly spread at the festival that an American was there.
Two of my roommates, Jake from South Korea and Camacho from Puerto Rico with Gonca from Turkey. Camacho is his last name but everyone loved it so it stuck.

I believe that is our President at the bottom with the Mickey Mouse ears.

They do not like our military bases.

My Turkish friends, Gulce and Pinar. We hung out many times throughout the two weeks.

Maria and Taimar. We became good friends and they want me to come to Estonia. Perhaps next year.

Our camp leaders and Vicenza natives, Monica and Genarro.

This is where we lived for 2 weeks, Casa De Imacolata. It's an old seminary but parts of it are still in use. We lived in a small section that had a summer school on the bottom floor during the week.

More about the camp later.