Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Summer Camp Begins

It's only Tuesday June 28th, the end of day 2 of camp, and I'm exhausted. It could be the heat but also the energy level of twenty 10 - 13 year olds. Two other PCVs, Alicia from a nearby village and Melissa from Salyan, are also staying with Sally and we've made plans for 5 days of activities this week, i.e. camp from 9AM to 1PM at Sally's school.

Day 1 had an Arts and Crafts theme and Sally had lots of ideas and materials planned from making name tags to origami to "god's eye"s to optical illusions. We headed back to Sally's apartment to debrief plus pull together more plans for Day 2  - Health theme.

Today, we began with a Jeopardy-like quiz on health - food, exercise, sports, body parts, interspersed with games and songs - Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. Melissa was a real trouper speaking Azeri instruction and questions since the camp was not English language, but open for all. They drew food on sheets of paper according to the new USDA Choose My Plate graphic, and also made paper cups for the trail mix we made for them. The morning ended with a slide presentation on dental health.


The 4 of us promised each other we would take naps this afternoon since it is tiring work. Alas, someone was selling fresh strawberries in the yard in the afternoon, so Sally bought enough to make strawberry jam. Thanks to her, we've also been eating quite well: hummus, gazpacho, cold lentil salad, baba ganoush, barley salad and a wonderful batch of BC turtle brownies.


Day 3 has the environment as the theme so we will be taking a nature walk, doing leaf rubbings, painting rocks, doing a food web, and picking up trash - with little games in-between.

I've got my fingers crossed that I will move on Saturday to my own independent housing and probably spend the 4th of July there. It's just another day in Masalli, Azerbaijan.

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