Summer vacation in Ukraine begins before the first day of June. Also by that first (or maybe the second) day of June summer camps begin. These camps give the students a chance to spend another week playing with their friends and learning a little more. Peace Corps volunteers often run or work at these camps all summer long to help out their friends. Well, at my site we decided to have a camp during spring break. My school felt that a two week camp would be best and we decided to start working on logistics. Around 60 to 75 students would be ideal. That way there would be less to organize since it was my first try. The camp would start a week after school ended so I would have more time to prepare. I started calling friends and making lessons. It seemed as though I had so much time to prepare, but the next thing I knew, there were meetings and schedules to be presented. In mid-May, things got a little more difficult. The interest in camp was higher than anyone had suspected. 120 children had already signed up. Also, the local administration told my director that the camp had to be 12 days. That meant two weeks with only one day off in between. I have to admit, there were days I got back to my apartment and wondered how I was going to pull this off. My five volunteers who were coming would be nowhere near enough. I got so frustrated with my school as the numbers climbed slowly from 120 to 133. Yet, my school was always right there with me. The students would be in groups of 20, so they gave me two Ukrainian teachers to supervise each group. There had to be seven groups, so teachers stepped up and taught lessons and our amazing gym teacher took huge groups of 40 at a time. On the first day of camp, I felt like it might even work out thanks to the support of my school. Looking back at those two weeks, I’m sure they won’t be the best thing I accomplish during my time here. I’m sure something else will be even more exciting and interesting, but it was the first time in my life that I really gave a project everything I had. I normally procrastinate and pull everything together barely in time, especially when the odds seem against me. I’ve never worked that hard on anything before and to have it be a success meant the world to me.
Camp
Posted in: School Life
Posted on August 5, 2010
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