Wish You Were Here

     The weather is beautiful. Or as my dad likes to say, "The weather is here, wish you were beautiful."
     What a day. I guess I'll begin at the beginning (what a novel concept) and we'll see where this goes. Not hitting writer's block just yet but it'll certainly feel like it soon.
     The day dawned way too early. The time stamp on that photo above the break is 5:30AM. Right about the time my body decided it was time to start being awake. The body is strong but the brain is weak. Or something like that. We needed to be out of the hotel early to get to the office before students. It didn't quite work out as discussed Sunday night but we still got there with plenty of time.
     After two taxis dropped us off at the office, we all piled in for photos, name tags, and the pre-camp ritual of student evaluation. Side note, it felt good to be back in the Big City office again. I spent innumerable hours in there. Like I said yesterday, it kind of felt like coming home.
     Pre-camp evaluations are an essential part of preparation for the camp. If we didn't do this, we'd be shuffling people in the English lessons for the rest of the week. The main idea is to talk with the students and figure out their comfort/skill level with English. The comfort level isn't nearly as important as their skill. We want to stretch and grow the students as they proceed through the camp. If it seems like they are on the border between skill levels, i.e. between beginner and intermediate, we'll push them to the higher level to force them to use what English they know and add to it throughout the week.
     Side note, the second, I saw several people from previous camps that I recognized. And even one student went to the Transform English Academy where I taught last year. Those were unexpected but welcome surprises.
     Once the evaluations were finished, it was time to load up and head out. The bus we were graced with this time was a double-decker similar to what we had to take us to the camp at the Black Sea in 2015. This time the ride was blessedly shorter. However it rocked like the sway bars and shocks had parted ways with their duties. High-seas-on-a-stormy-night kind of rock-n-roll. I'm not sure if the discomfort I was feeling was related to that or something else. More on that later. Fortunately we avoided any other big stomach-situations. It seems I'm not the only one who's susceptible to crazy drivers and motion sickness.
     But like I said, the ride was much shorter than two years ago. It also seemed a little quieter. We didn't have as much time during the trip to get acquainted with the students. However it was a good chance to be still (as much as we could) for a few moments and collect our thoughts. Before we knew it, we'd arrived at Zazimie.
     The Hotel Complex Zazimie is a getaway location about an hour northeast Kiev. By far, it's the best location we've utilized for English camp in the four years I've been doing this. You'll see from the pictures but, trust me, it's good. My room, which I'm sharing with Brandon is really nice. It has a bigger bathroom than my apartment back home. It's fully furnished (fridge, couch, leopard-print curtains) and quite comfortable.
     Once we were all settled, we divided up the students and staff into their group. I'm on Green Team this year with one other American, Megan. Sasha, who plays in the worship band at Big City Church, is our group leader. The daughter of my Russian teacher is our translator. We filled our first time with ice-breakers, some games and a time of get-to-know-you with the students on our team.

Natasha, Sasha, Valentine, Vladislave, Alina

Vika, Helen, Viktoria, Sergey, Julia

     English on the first day is always a little rough, today included. It's been over a year since I've done anything English teaching-related. Not since the English club ended at the beginning of last summer. But for a rusty first time out, it wasn't mind-numbingly bad. Just rough.
     The sport time today is kind of hard to explain. We were told ahead of time to put on clothes that we didn't mind messing up. So shortly after English we showed up to the football field in the back of the complex for an interesting game time. There was water, slip-n-slides, water balloon launchers, and lots of running. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Dinner was really good tonight. I had some tea with my rice, mixed veggies and meatballs.

     I'm feeling brief tonight so I'll just say that Max is back. He's not in charge of X-Way this year. He's just here for the lecture time. His series this week is very similar to what he's spoken about in the past. He's titled his series "Way Home."

     The opening ceremonies were oddly placed towards the end of the first day. That's OK. It gave me time to work on piecing together the American team's introduction video while Max was talking.
     Like I've said in the past, this isn't a vacation. Most of us have taken vacation time to be here. It's gonna be tough and frustrating at times. But by the Grace of God, we'll get through. Gotta sleep now. And it's not even done yet. Still have team time. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling that great. Like I said earlier, there was some discomfort on the bus ride, stomach-wise. It seems to have morphed into the beginning stages of a fever. I'll spare the gory details. Basically I'm not feeling well and we've still got four and a half days of camp. Four and a half days of English, activities, and interactions that must happen. I'm going to get as much sleep tonight as I can and we'll see how things are in the morning. Good night.