Coppercreek Camp: Meet Cynthia Yeh

My name is Cynthia. My last name is Yeh. It sounds like the backwards of “hey!”

Even though it forced me to be in the back of the line when we had to stand in alphabetical order according to last names, I’ve always liked my last name.

This summer will be my first summer at Coppercreek and I’m stoked. We don’t have to stand in line in alphabetical order for showers and meals do we? Regardless, I’m still stoked!

I’m from sun shiny California and I was born and raised in San Jose (some call it Silicon Valley because we are the hub of the tech world).

Therefore, it makes sense that my daddy is a programming engineer and my mommy is a network engineer. Me, I studied Biochemistry and Environmental Science, and received my undergraduate degree at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

I had a fun time in SLO, made some great friends, learned how to be more independent, and got to try all sorts of new skills which I will attempt to hone at Coppercreek this summer.

To be honest, I’m not really great at any one skill. However, I love to learn and try new things. While at Cal Poly I tried out horseback riding. Here’s a picture of me and my horse Casey.

Also, throughout college I was a volunteer for Tricalifornia Events Inc, in helping organize triathlons in California. With them, I got to do many cool and fun things to prepare and run these races, such as kayaking around athletes, driving a forklift, throwing cement blocks from a boat, organizing 300 volunteers to be happy while doing unpleasant tasks, practicing teamwork and team building, staying up for 70 hours on adrenaline, napping on demand, and more!

While I may try to be hardcore and tough, I like being a princess sometimes too. I enjoy going ocean fishing for salmon just as much as I like to dress up for the Renaissance faire.

Or a ninja using a horse lead to climb a roof.

It doesn’t end there though; I’m older than I look! I am 24 years old now, which means it’s been over 2 years since I’ve graduated from Cal Poly, SLO. Right after college, I landed in Romania as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was something I was pursuing since I was 17 years old. Oh…but I’ve been wanting to be a camp counselor since I was 14 years old. I like to believe that some dreams take a while, but if you keep pursuing them, they’ll happen eventually.

Here I am with my Romanian cake. Teachers at a school presented me this cake for working with them on a project. Romania is where Nadia Comaneci (the gymnast who scored the first perfect 10 at the Olympics) was born, it’s next to the Black sea, and may also be recognized as being the host country of Dracula. He is a myth. I have been here 2 years, and I’ve been to almost all the castles here and I’ve not seen any sign of vampires. But…I never explored them at night…

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania, I work in the mayor’s office on community and economic development. I live in a small community of 5,500 people, and besides working at the mayor’s office I more often do small project in the community. Being a Peace Corps volunteer isn’t just about helping and teaching others, it’s just as equally about learning from the people I live with.

I’ve refined domestic skills such as learning how to make mayonnaise from scratch, and to pickle pairs of peppers and cucumbers to make pickles.

I’ve learned how to raise little energetic puffballs to become curious, healthy, and independent chickens and roosters. (She’s not a mutant- I pasted sunflower seeds to her head).

Examples of work I’ve done within my community would be:
I’ve partnered up with teachers to organize events for their students, such as dressing up to celebrate Halloween. (It was a special triumph that I coerced the teacher to dress up in a costume too!)

Most of the time, it was just me and kids hanging out together doing our own thing. Visits to the village river, Olympics week, or the Amazing Race, cooking Chinese food, we did all sorts of fun stuff.