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On Camp Naru’s sprawling 640-acre campus, every day began with conversations concerning the Korean American expertise. Campers then participated in actions like taekwondo and cooking genuine Korean dishes. Chloe Kim, the Korean American snowboarder and two-time Olympic gold medalist, even stopped by in the future.
“Our upbringings could also be distinctive; nonetheless, there’s numerous cultural parts that tie us collectively. I feel once we’re in a position to domesticate a neighborhood that actually understands that, it actually permits us to really feel extra comfy and safe,” the camp’s director, Benjamin Oser, stated. A Korean adoptee who grew up exterior Princeton, N.J., he attended an immersion camp himself within the mid-Nineties and estimates that Naru is now considered one of about 15 such camps within the United States.
This 12 months, the camp shall be held in East Stroudsburg, Penn., on the japanese aspect of the Poconos. Bringing the campers collectively in these distinctive pure areas, away from their on a regular basis houses, “builds that sense of safety, and, in a means, it’s like constructing a bubble,” he defined. And inside that secure harbor, the campers discover the liberty to discover.
“I didn’t actually know Korean that nicely. And I solely went to the nation as soon as. I felt like my complete life has simply been spent within the U.S. — that I’m not, like, Korean Korean, I suppose,” Ryan, at proper, stated.
Camp Naru, and the neighborhood she discovered there, helped her carry that discomfort into focus, and begin to dismantle it. “It helped me understand that I’m who I’m, and I don’t assume I ought to have to decide on,” she stated.
