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Camp Haiastan, My Beautiful Home – U. Lucille Barberian

My Beautiful Home: AYF Camp Haiastan

By Lucille Barberian

Home: A place where one lives permanently.

AYF Camp Haiastan is my home, not physically but emotionally, because camp will be permanently engraved in my heart until the end of time. My years spent at camp have structured me into a more loving and hopeful person. I have learned that there are good people in this world who are just like me, yet so different.

Our campground in Franklin, MA, is beautiful in every sense of the word. Camp is beautiful for sentences I cannot pull together to describe, and pictures that will never do it justice. Camp is beautiful because the two weeks we share together allow Armenians to be themselves in an environment that accepts everyone. AYF Camp Haiastan forms relationships with others, from across the country and even sometimes the world, that can never be broken. Camp offers shelter, food, love, and entertainment. We have our own world at camp, away from the real world, that enables and encourages campers much like myself to be proud to be Armenian.

Not only has AYF Camp Haiastan opened my eyes to be proud of who I am, but it has shown me that if being yourself, for whatever reason, is not accepted anywhere else, being yourself is accepted here. I am so blessed to have experienced the memories, people, and events at AYF Camp Haiastan, and I am forever proud to be Armenian and to call this beautiful place my home.