One of my favorite days of camp was day one. I spent the day teaching children music and helping my friends get to know my school. They taught team building, which didn’t really go that well. It helped them to get to know the kids though.
At the end of the day, we had our opening ceremony. I had helped plan this with another teacher. There would be a skit, the volunteers would introduce themselves, the teams would introduce themselves and then the director would speak. It would all end with the Ukrainian national anthem.
When we got to the ceremony, I had a suspicion that something had been changed. All of the students from camp who danced were wearing their costumes. I had no idea how different the ceremony had become.
After we all introduced ourselves, students gave us pictures of a local park and Ukrainian and American flags. Then the dancing started. It was a dance I had seen several times before, but it always amazes me, especially toward the end when individual students show off their skills. A couple girls spin around quickly, another dances, but the boys are the most impressive. They drop to the floor, pop back up, lean to one side, then the other and drop down again. A different one does the traditional Russian/Ukrainian dance where you drop down and kick one leg at a time.
After the dance is finished, a single girl approached us carrying a large loaf of fancy Ukrainian bread. The loaf is round and usually decorated with braided bread and bread flowers. It’s a Ukrainian tradition to welcome people to a new place and a huge sign of respect and gratitude. I was touched that we were going to get the same treatment I had seen my director and other important people receive.
The girl walked up to us on stage and bowed. Not really knowing what to do, we bowed back. She bowed to us again and held the bread out for us to take. We responded by bowing again. Not knowing what else to do, I whispered loudly to Rob, who was standing in front of the girl, “Take the bread.” He did and the ceremony continued with the teams introducing themselves.
The bread problem, however, wasn’t solved. The huge loaf of bread weighed about 15 or 20 pounds. Not wanting to offend anyone, Rob was still standing there holding it when the teams were finished and the director began to speak. We were having a hard time keeping a straight face as Rob awkwardly held bread and we struggled to understand my director, who speaks very quickly. Eventually someone noticed that he had been holding a huge, heavy loaf of bread for about ten minutes and told him to put it down on the table, of course.
Our last surprise came at the end of the ceremony. As per tradition, we ended the ceremony with the national anthem and they slowly raised the Ukrainian flag. After their anthem had finished, they started playing the American national anthem. It was a great surprise since none of us had heard it since December when we were sworn in as volunteers. We all sang along happily. Then the second verse of the anthem started playing. I have no idea where they found a version with two verses. All our Ukrainian friends still looked serious, while we looked around confused since none of us had ever heard the second verse before. I can only imagine what they were thinking when we didn’t even know our own national song.
So many other things happened during camp though. Our history lesson was a secret mission to “Boston Harbor” to throw boxes all over the place. Because of a miscommunication, we accidentally taught 136 Ukrainian children to dance “Baby Shark” completely wrong. We had a field day full of American games and races where one group, instead of letting their teammates jump over the stick, decided to go bowling and knock down their friends with a wooden baton to the shin.
The students treated us like celebrities. First they wanted their picture with us. Then it turned to autographs. After every day of camp we would take an extra ten or twenty minutes for pictures and autographs. When Nikita left, my tenth form girls cried to see him go. I had the joy of explaining to my site when new volunteers would show up out of nowhere. Sam came for one day because he was passing through. Joseph and Steph both came for two lessons to do me a favor.
Now, two months after camp started, I miss those days. I miss working with the kids outside and not having to assign homework or grades. I even miss getting to school every morning knowing that there will be some change or problem to be worked through. Mostly I miss my students’ enthusiasm. I don’t think they realized that they were in lessons during camp. Now I just have to keep that feeling up for the next school year…
Posted on August 7, 2010
0