Cool the Engines

     Tuesday was a much better day. If I forget about certain little things, it was a really good day. Those little things were the heat and fleas.

      Yes, seriously, the heat was bad again. At least, it was in the classroom. The beginner group, to which I've assigned myself, was given an upstairs room out of the way of the regular bustle. It's a small museum that displays some of the history and achievements of this sanitarium. It also has only one small window that opens. The door fortunately is not far from another that leads onto the roof. We do get some breeze from there. But not much. I spent half the time, after bringing up chairs, just sweating. I didn't do much else. We later moved out onto the roof for the active English session.
     The other small thing is actually a mass of things. My room, and indeed this place, seems to have a flea infestation. Tim, the intern and my roommate for the week, saw something hopping on his bed. A few minutes later, I stepped out onto our balcony and almost immediately there were three fleas on each of my feet. This was confirmed by looking at each closely and by seeing some of them hop away. I even found another on my foot when I was down in the lobby. I'll be glad to leave at the end of the week.
     Overall, I think the day went well. We started off with a staff meeting to voice our feelings and opinions of the previous day. We also got a chance to pray and prepare for the day.
     Breakfast was followed by the regularly scheduled academic English and then Fun English. Two hours of academic word is hard, especially in this heat. The teachers in the beginner group (Tim, Andrew, and Elliot) are doing well, despite it. Andrew has one of those personalities that, in public, is always cheerful and sunny. Even if he's not really feeling it inside, it helps the students have fun while learning. 

      Lunch followed on the heels of Active English. As has been the case so far, the food was good. Despite all the multitude of downsides to this place, the food is definitely good. I'm glad that the chefs take their work seriously.

     In the afternoon I got to teach the camp how to play Ultimate Frisbee. Unfortunately I don't have any photos from it yet. They're all on my camera and I don't have my computer here. I'll do a photo dump after camp either here or on the "What I've Seen" page sometime next week. I'm really worn out from it. Running on sand is something no one should need to do.

     I'm writing this now during Max's One Way talk. The theme of the week, "One," is his way of showing the singular hope and purpose of the Christian faith. His talks are similar to the past camps. He tries to break down objections to Christianity and by the end of the week he is able to present the Gospel as the solution.

     One thing I didn't mention yesterday was the content of the opening ceremony. All of the teams made videos to introduce themselves. I think I did mention that Tim and I had to make one too at the last minute. We watched each of the videos from the teams and followed those with demonstrations of the "national dances" from each of the countries represented. The Ukrainians were oddly absent from these demonstrations. The Texans needed to show what they thought were three main dances from the UK. The British needed to show a dance from Texas. Tim was forced into a River Dance (despite being from Zimbabwe). And I had to show something that was a symbol of redheads. Basically I strutted around for ten seconds with my nose in the air like I was better than everyone else.
     In a way, I'm glad this is my last English camp of the year. I'm definitely worn out and ready for some time off. I'll probably take a week or so to cool my engines when I return home.

"Why Ukraine is not Russia"