City camp Korycanská

After my two weeks at residential camp and one day of tour-guiding with no day off I was already pretty exhausted by the time this camp came around. I definitely wasn't excited to be awake at 5:30 AM, showering, snídaně (breakfast) -ing, and hopping on a bus to a kindergarten. At least this kindergarten was an easy commute from my apartment.

What is it? It's Big Ben! 

I'm driving a bus, but I had to swerve quickly to avoid a cat in the road!

The theme of the city camps is the Olympic Games, so the kids learned words about London and the Olympics, made crafts like Olympic torches and olive wreaths for their heads, and played Olympic Games. The kids that week were all pretty sweet, except for one that was pretty spoiled and would cry about really dumb stuff. For the most part, he was actually quite funny, but he was also responsible for what I will deem "Worst Camp Moment" to date. Here is the moment:

It's Friday, the last day of camp. We have asked all the parents to come early so we can do a short presentation for them where the kids use the English they've learned during the week, etc. So all of the parents are watching. We do the short performance, and now we're passing out certificates. There are three teachers, and we all have something to give the kids - trouble is we didn't think about putting them all in the same order, so we have to rifle through piles of certificates and diplomas to find the right one as each kid comes through the line. So it's already a little chaotic. Then, Problem Child comes through the line.

We have prepared for the kids a diploma saying they completed the week of English camp, but we also prepared a certificate for each one with something special about them (sweetest smile, most helpful, etc). On PC's (Problem Child's) certificate, we wrote "Little Mr. Wolf".  The reason we wrote that is that there is a game called Mr. Wolf, and he wanted to play it every 5 seconds. He loved this game. So this is his certificate. He's about 6 years old so he can't even read yet, but as he takes the certificate Marketa tells him what it's for. All of the sudden PC bursts into tears. So here we are, rifling through piles of certificates, sweating, children are backed up in line, and all of the sudden one of them is bawling crying. And the parents are sitting there watching it all. It was definitely not our best moment.

You may be wondering why the PC was crying about being Little Mr. Wolf. Well, it's obviously because he wanted to be a SAILOR. How could we have possibly made him a wolf when it is clear to all that he is a sailor? I don't know how we could have been so stupid. Maybe it's because we never played any games about boats or sailing? Or because he never mentioned his intense love for the high seas? Or the fact that he lives in a land-locked country? The fact is, people, that it was absolutely and completely random. The best part about the situation was that the father, who seemed to be guilty party number one in the spoiled-child department, threw up his hands as if he had never seen such behavior from his angelic son (highly unlikely as it happened on average 3-4 times a day). The child would not stop crying until Marketa actually marked out the part about Mr. Wolf and wrote in Sailor.

Despite a less-than-perfect finale, the week was good. The city camps are much less grueling than the residential camps, because at 5 o'clock we're out the door and back to our apartments - more about apartments later. For the field trip this week, we took the kids to the planetarium. It was nice, but the kids program we watched in the actual planetarium room was in Czech, so I didn't understand it and mostly used the time for napping (with intermittent awakenings to tell the kids to be quiet or put their feet down). Afterward we played games in Stromovka Park. I know I am not supposed to have favorites, but how can I help it? Kids are just little people, and you always bond with some people more quickly than others. My favorite camper this week was Ema, who is five years old. She got immediate points for simply having the same name as my niece. She was really shy on the first day, and didn't really want to talk to me. Over the week she started hanging out with me more, and during the field trip on Thursday she started this thing where she would tickle my neck - I would giggle, which she found hilarious, and it became a little game. It was so sweet. I will miss her.

Ema, on the left, coloring with Adelka

Bara, she is totally her own little person!

Bětka is showing me her rainbow

Playing a game on the last day

I know I said I would write about the apartment situation and more about my Italy plans, but it will have to wait until tomorrow as I have a nasty headache tonight. I've been a little stressed out lately about personal stuff. Tomorrow morning I'm giving a presentation to my own TEFL school about my job! Seven short months ago I was sitting in one of those chairs watching a presentation by two of my now co-workers. They totally made me want to work for my company, so hopefully I (along with Marissa, one of my fellow TEFL students and now co-workers) can do the same.

More to come...

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. 

I have so much to write about, but it's too hard to find time to do it! I thought I would be able to write about my travels during my down time at summer camp - little did I know that "down time" doesn't actually exist at summer camp. At least not at this one, as it is a residential camp, meaning it runs from Sunday to Saturday and the kids live at the camp with us (we are four teachers, of which I am the only native English speaker.) We are living in a run-down hotel in a town called Dolní Dvůr which was purchased by my language school. The food is terrible and the ceiling in my classroom is leaking.

Despite these facts, I am having a pretty great time. I like the Czech teachers very much and all of the kids are great too. We are in the Krkonoše Mountains, which are very beautiful. We get to spend a lot of time outside in the woods, hiking and playing games. Yesterday we took the children on a 5km hike from our hotel to the nearest town, where they got to do some souvenir shopping. I took a lot of pictures along the way, which I will share with you now. I'm sure you know I have many pictures from my trip to Oslo, Copenhagen and Paris, but they will have to wait until I have enough time to write about them.

In further news, I have decided to take a trip to Italy next month. I have a two week break from summer camps, and I have purchased a round-trip plane ticket from Prague to Milan. From Milan, I will take a train to Rome, then back up to Tuscany, where I will spend the rest of the trip. In preparation for this trip I am reading Goethe's Italian Journey, about his adventures in Italy beginning in 1786. I'm hoping to get some inspiration from the book on places to see while I am there.

I know I will have more time for writing after I return to Prague, which will be July 15. I will still be teaching at summer camps there, but they will not be residential camps, so I will be done and able to return home at 5pm - also I will have weekends off. I know I will need it - we don't get very much sleep here in Dolní Dvůr!