English, Egyptian, and Ekibastus: Everyone’s eager!

Germany August 14^th, Almaty August 15^th, Pavlodar August 16^th, and then to Bayanaul August 18^th for an English camp. Busy, busy, busy… Anyways, I was really excited to do this English camp and I’m totally glad I signed on for it. The way the camp was arranged was that there were 5 teams, each representing a country. Each day was a different country’s theme (i.e. Monday was India day, Tuesday was Egypt day, etc.) There were five different lessons they went to each day: Art, Culture, Biography, History, and Language. For whatever reason, I got picked to teach language each day, meaning I had to teach phrases in Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, and French. Nothing complicated – we only had 25 minutes for each lesson, so I was able to learn the phrases I needed and teach them.

Afternoons were filled with different activities and beach time. And like all summer camps, the kids were a bit shy at the beginning of the week as most people don’t know each other. But by the end of the camp, you have seen these kids! They were in love with the American counselors, that’s for sure. Most of them wouldn’t stop asking for pictures and/ or our signatures… I’m no rock star, but I got a little taste of what that’s like… we were rock stars to these kids and you could really see they had a great time and that’s what made me the most happy :-)

After camp was finished and all had said their goodbyes, several of the volunteers needed to catch a bus back to the city. But after many hours of standing in the ticket line, we found out that the last two buses of the day had no more spots on them… So we bummed around a bit, trying to negotiate taxi prices with people and finally got a guy to drive us to a different town where he assured us we could catch a bus back to Pavlodar. We took him up on the offer and set off for Ekibastus. We got there at just the right time to buy the last 7 tickets on the last bus to Pavlodar. A miracle, for certain.

Four weeks of being away from home meant only one thing: time to open the nice wine and take a hot bath and answer 78 emails. For now, life is back to normal. And while I like to be on the go, traveling as much as possible, sometimes quiet and normal is nice, too :-)

my team, team India, preparing their flag and poster.


"The Big Game" monsters: Andrew, Scott, and Jeff


Team India posing after their team skit - nice elephant!


Every day was ended with a review game - I did a mix of jeopardy and a race.


Annnnnnnd.... Go!


Tie dye time


Relay race


Review game number 2 - tie their legs together than make them walk around answering questions.


Review game #3 - hide under a blanket and answer questions?


Saule helping me build a sweet fire.


Anyone wants s'mores?


Mary, me, Akmaral, and Jeff


Sumo wrestling on the beach on Japan day.


Sumo wrestling fun :-)


I finally gave in to chants and beat Danil, a local teacher, in Sumo wrestling.


Spain's skit started with some very convincing spanish musicians.


Dodgeball!


I taught my language lessons in the yurt - pretty cool.


Posing on a break on the hike.


Dance party!


Hullo