After a three-week whirlwind of non-stop action, I am hunkering down here in Prague waiting for the next one to begin. And it certainly will. In the next month I have a trip to Italy, two more summer camps, and looking for, finding and moving into a new apartment.

I will begin by posting pictures for the rest of my time at Dolní Dvůr. I like that at the residential camp you get to know the kids better, but it is also incredibly exhausting. There is never any time alone there, and the work day merges with the night.

Here are some more pictures from the first week:

 Hana and I planning

Hana - I love her :)

Field Trip!

The day of the Epic Water Balloon Fight

Hana is trying to escape from Pepa's aerial attacks 

And now Radek throws Hana in the pool

Jiři carries the little ones up the ski slope

Just hanging out in the woods, playing some games

Some classroom action

The boy on the left in the blue shirt in the classroom picture had a little crush on me. His name is Jachym and he is 11 years old, shy but very intelligent. It was really funny because the next week, when the mail came (the kids get postcards from their family at camp) the Czech teacher told me I had mail. I was very confused because I hadn't given anyone the address of the camp, and I certainly wasn't expecting any mail. It was a postcard from Jachym, who was still in the mountains on vacation with his family. I scanned it because the message is so cute.

I especially love that I am "Lady" Angela Larson!

I was very sad to see Hana and Radek leave after the first week and have to start the week with two different teachers. Plus, rather than the 18 children we had the first week, we had 33 kids the second week! But, I quickly grew to respect Lenka and Denisa, my Czech colleagues from week 2. We had a good week. Well, except that we had to complain to our supervisors about the terrible food and terrible hygiene at the hotel. That wasn't the best, but it was totally necessary - it was way worse the second week as we had almost twice the number of children. My digestion is still recovering from eating there for two weeks. I saw almost no vegetables the entire time, and the diet consisted mainly of fatty meat, potatoes or white bread and gravy. As soon as I got back to Prague, this is what happened in my world:

A ton and half of salad with fresh veggies from the market

One of the things we had the kids do at camp was draw a picture of themselves to put on the doors to their rooms. I also made a picture for my door. Here is a picture of one of the kids' rooms, and my self-portrait:

Here are some pictures from the second week at Dolní Dvůr. Please keep in mind that I shamelessly exploit the facebook albums of my co-workers, downloading their pictures and recycling them here. Chances are if it is a really good picture without my trendy polaroid look, I didn't take it. I would like to commend said co-workers on their photography talents, and hope that they will consider my sneaky appropriations a compliment. 

Super cute pictures taken by Denisa

Nina

Zuzanka

This cow skull was used as a terror-tactic in our attempts to scare the kids at night. I don't think it was very successful at scaring the kids, but it made us roll on the floor laughing. You definitely had to be there:

This week, we took our field trip to a little cottage called Apalucha. The week was themed after a Czech movie that was filmed at this cottage. As soon as we got to the cottage, it started raining, so we had to hike all the way back in the rain. It was fun.

At Apalucha

Beautiful view of a stormy afternoon in the mountains

We played a silly game with the kids where they had to feed each other yogurt - blindfolded. This resulted in a hilarious mess of yogurt all over everyone, and a lot of laughs. And the teachers were not spared! I had yogurt in my bra.

By the end of my two weeks at the camp, I was totally ready to go back home, and totally exhausted. Incidentally, there would be no day off for me. The residential camp ended on Saturday, I got back to Prague Saturday night, and in the morning I met a family from the U.S. who had found my ad for English lessons on Craigslist and asked me to be a tour guide!

So, the Sunday after Dolní Dvůr had me acting as Prague tour guide, taking the Zizka (originally Zizkovsky, named after a famous Czech general) family through Old Town Square, Josefov, Zizkov, Namesti Miru, and back to Wenceslas Square. It was a busy and fun day. I enjoyed spending the day with the family very much, although they reminded me very much of my own family, and made me miss them all even more.

I'll end this part of the blog with a couple of pictures of me with the kids from the second week at Dolní Dvůr. The first one is me with my favorite camper, a little one named Jonaš. So cute! And the other is myself with the girls from the second week. I still have one more week of camp to post pictures of (city camp in Prague this past week), and I still haven't forgotten all of the pictures I still have to post from my trip last month. So many pictures...

What to expect in the next blog post: pictures from my week at Prague City Camp Korycanská, an update on my living situation and why I'm moving, and a little more on my plans for Italy. Miss you all and thanks for being patient with me during the summer when it's much more difficult to keep up with blogging and correspondence.