If You Could Read My Mind...

The skies over Norway.

     ...you'd probably be surprised about what's going to come next. (How's that for clickbait?) But let me take a minute to take care of a few other things first. I'm planning with this post to do a bit of an after-action report of the camp and how it all went for me. I want to get my thoughts down on electrons before I forget too much about what went on. I've noticed with time that I tend to forget the bad things that happened and only remember the good. So this will have a bit of both. The good, the bad and the ugly (not that there was a lot of that). So here goes.

Fly Me To The Moon

     Let me sail directly to bed. Believe me, Frank would have sung that if he was going to have the flight we'll have in the next few minutes. I'm writing this really quick because I wanted to keep my writing streak going. One post per day. Look for another post later this week about my final thoughts from camp.
     For now, the flight leaves here at 6:20PM local and arrives at JFK at 9:05PM local. We've got a bit of a ride between now and then. And that doesn't even include standing in line at Customs, waiting for baggage and driving back to Reading, PA. I'll be trying to sleep on the plane and in the van. Definitely looking forward to being back home.
     Sunday, since we had a delayed flight, we did a bit of walking around buy the final things we wanted. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

This is my new passport cover.

Although this was a close contender for the spot.

The best way to describe this is a tubular grilled cheese.

I Turn My Camera On

     Since this day was a lot of sightseeing and walking around. I'll just let the pictures do the talking. But the basics are that we went to church in the morning. One student came from camp. Afterwards, most came and met up with us while we walking around the city. The Sunday after camp is always a sightseeing day to share some more time with the students. The short and sweet of it was that it was awesome. We had a wonderful time with the students who came. Unfortunately not all could be here. Some had to go home to other cities. But those that were there were great walking companions. It's sad to leave them.
     So without further ado, enjoy these photos. Tomorrow's a travel day so I hope to have something written before we board our plane.

Chocolate cake with mini eclairs inside.

Calm After the Storm

Natasha and Zhenya playing with static electricity.

     We did it. We finally made it to the end of the week. Just like any massive undertaking, it took doing each step one thing at a time. And now here we are. In the calm after the storm. Time to rest for a bit before the sightseeing on Sunday afternoon. As they say, "it's all over but the crying."

I Can't Dance

A dramatic reenactment of my waking movements this morning.

     Thus the last day of camp dawned; with yawns like caverns and skies like slate. Is it really Friday? I suppose it is. A friend asked me if this camp was going fast for me. Throughout this whole week, I've only had this concept of Friday in my head as a distant thing. I've been trying to take the events of the week one thing at a time. When I start thinking too far ahead, I begin to get overwhelmed by the number of things on my plate.

Band on the Run

     Yes, we, the weary band of travelers, had to run...yet again. So. Much. Running. But such is the cost of the quest. At least we had fun.

L-R: Katya, Yulia, Dasha, me, Nastia, Kolya, Yulia, Max, Nastia, Misha, Joan, Jesse, Marusya, Natasha

Photograph

     I did one of these posts last year and it was an easy way of getting more detail out there. This is just a photo collection that didn't exactly fit in anywhere else. Random things that I thought were good by themselves. Enjoy.

The Bridge of Love.

500 Miles

     There was a lot of running today. Not quite 500 miles. But it was still. So. Much. Running. We had a bit of a mix up of the schedule today. Wednesday is traditionally the day of the Quest. However, due to the rain this week, we moved things around a bit. Basically, they swapped the Quest with the Ultimate Frisbee tournament.
      I've been riding my bike a lot this summer. So the running was better than I thought. But it was still the most I've run at one time probably since last year. Surprisingly, I felt really good at the end. Tired but good.

Who Can It Be Now?

     That was the question today in the big event; the Living Library. But, unlike the story in the song, it wasn't a bad thing today. For those who don't remember or who don't want to dig through my backlog of posts, the Living Library is an event to encourage relationship growth between students and staff (both American and Ukrainian).

     After the morning's festivities (exercises, 2.5 hours of English, and lunch), we were given our directions for the two hour event labeled on the schedule as "Fun." There would be three stations. The first was table games, the second was the American staff, and the third was the Ukrainian staff. The color teams would rotate among the different stations every 45 minutes. And in both staff stations, the students would rotate among the staff for a chance to talk to whomever they wanted. With a total of 19 students this year, the ratio was really good for students to get a chance to talk.

Young Blood

     Is this what it feels like to grow old? To see the younger generation come up through and take over the program? Without getting the input of the older members of the team, I'd have to say yes. But, in this case, it's good to have young blood in the driver's seat. Allow me to explain.

Zhenya bestowing instructions to the camp.

Come Together

First weekend accommodations. Mine is the messy bed.

     I'm still feeling a bit jet-lagged today so this'll be a light post again. There are challenges every year and they're starting early for me. This year it's sleep. The past two nights I've gotten barely over half my usual amount of sleep. And for some reason, it was split into two parts each night. Even with the opportunity to sleep in way past the usual time. In lieu of that, I decided to take Sunday afternoon for myself and just relax. But back to the beginning.

Before the Deluge

Dark hot chocolate from Aroma Kava

     For those of you in the back row of the class, that title is what I like to call foreshadowing. But there was plenty of before/during/after deluges, drizzles, and "mushroom rains" today. The forecast was calling for rain off and on all day and we got it. On our sightseeing day too. That's OK. It certainly didn't dampen our spirits.

Ramblin' Man

L-R: Austin, Brian, Joan, Rich, Guilio, Kristen, Bryson, Jesse.

      Yes folks, it's that time of year again. The time that I and my friends travel to the land of borsch and bobushkas for a frenetic week of English-teaching, friendship-making, culture-sharing camp in Ukraine! And yes I'll be a bit rambly (talking) while I ramble on (fly).