Today is the day!

Message of  the day: Brenda first offered a thought for the women on the team – A woman of courage enters a room and everyone is put at ease. There is something appealing in the way she walks and in the way she holds herself. This thought is attributed to Maya Angelou. Brenda offered a second thought for all members of the team –Success doesn’t always have a big neon sign pointing in the right direction. It simply comes when you act freely and instinctively. Source Unknown
 
With thoughts racing through my head, as they would on any first day of school, we head out the door.  Freya and I make it to breakfast on time – that even includes getting out old-school skeleton keyed lock to work!  And that is not bad for people that have to walk almost 2.5 meters to the dining hall.  (I intentionally used metric to mess up the Americans, and I  am hoping that none of you take
the time to convert to inches and feet.)   As my foot crosses the threshold, I see one of my dream breakfasts: Blintzes! They were divine, warm, with sweet cheese in the middle.   A bowl of whipped cream (The real kind, I believe, not that Redi-Whip stuff!).  After devouring mine, I took one for the team and ate Freya’s as well.  She wasn’t as enamored with them as I was – But don’t fret!  I’ll be asking for a touch of DNA screening when we get back state-side.  I mean she doesn’t like blintzes?!  Maybe she’ll grow into them.  I can only hope.
  
After breakfast, it was time.  Freya and I strolled out to the tent and I looked for our students.  Every other group was sitting as a group and quietly waiting for their volunteer.  Not mine, my seven kids managed to arrange themselves in three small groups, cleverly hidden among the rest.  In spite
of the clever camouflage and hiding among their peers, we were able to find them.  We wrangled them and headed out to the cook out/bonfire area – Freya’s first choice location.

On the way out, I experienced all my first-day-of-school jitters. Sweaty palms, that were easily concealed on a 80 degree day. A sweaty dome, but that is my normal state in the summer. I had briefly thought that my least favorite harbinger of school wasn’t going to show its damp head in Poland. Perhaps it had missed its connection in Amsterdam. But no, it had followed me.
 
That single, lonely bead of sweat gelled into existence and started it’s long trek down the middle of my back.  No matter how I twisted and squirmed, I couldn’t squash it, it was indestructible.  I had to make peace with it or just concede that this was the first day of school.  I chose to concede.
 
We made it out to the cook out/bonfire area and grabbed a center table.  There, there were 14 little eyes staring at me and two terrified eyes staring back. Off to the side were two other eyes (Freya's), I think that were secretly enjoying my discomfort.
 
With some bumbling and stumbling I got the kids to make name tents and label them.  Luckily they took pity on me and were able to mimic my motions and successfully make name tents.  I like to think that my non-verbal skills put Koko the gorilla to shame, but it was probably some nice Polish teacher who uses the same trick I used that had taught these kids how to make these pinnacles of personal nomenclature.

After that success, I braved the folders.  (I need to point out that these folders were much cooler than the folders I give my students at home, these folders fold over with flaps on the side to prevent pen-loss.  (Pen-loss prevention?!  Genius!)

I asked the kids to decorate the folder with things that they like and true to 10-year old kids on either side of the Atlantic:  The boys drew sports, more sports, a cat, weapons and rampant accidental destruction of things that were beautiful! (This may have been possibly caused when we pulled out a Frisbee in front of the beautiful garden before the manor house and handed it to kids who made the statement, “You couldn’t hit the side of a barn from the inside!” believable.)  The girls? They drew horses, every single one of them.  That took up our first period so we took a small break and pulled out the Uno cards.  If you ever need to take a young, Polish girl to Vegas take Julia, that girl is a shark and handily won our first game of Uno while I was still straightening the deck!  Maybe, I should have said Monaco, but I wasn’t 100% so I had to Google it.
 
After break we moved to colors, the alphabet, numbers, and shapes.  The kids all had impressive
vocabularies and I was very impressed. They knew their numbers readily and quickly figured out the rules for the flash cards.  We were able to quickly combine all of the things we had discussed into several activities:  a shape scavenger hunt (Thank you, Lori, for the idea), and silly sentences (Machic has 59 brothers, 43 sisters and 18 dragons.  The grocery bills at his house must be astronomical.) We did manage to get some Frisbee in and were able to improve on their accuracy, but for future use, I need to ask how to say, “Aim with your shoulders!” in Polish!
 
  I am looking forward to working with the kids tomorrow!  Days of the week and the months….All to be assimilated into complete sentences.  We have also been challenged to a game of Ultimate Frisbee by Eric and his group.  I think I am going to take advantage of my jet-lag and wake my kids up at 2:00 am for some light calisthenics and a few hundred Frisbee throws.  Please keep this on the low-low, but once again if we are talking odds – Why would I gamble?  When I can just as easily wake some kids up at dark-o-clock at night and mold them in to world class Frisbee throwers!  – After all, Eric may think it is cheating, but it’s easier if we just keep him in the dark! And I’d rather save the dark for Frisbee practice!

Then the evening activity, camp initiation rolled around.   Previous campers were sitting on one side of the tent, while the volunteers sat on the other.  However, two little Polish girls, Gabi and Ala, sat with us as well. It was with great confusion that we all watched the room get “set up…” 

A handful of older girls brought in a small tub full of pasta, leaves, pine cones, grass and of all things a hard boiled, peeled egg. They then filled it up with water. Three other girls laid out puffed up and deflated garbage bags.  When I wasn’t looking a heap of pine cones was dropped in the middle of the floor.  Yet another set of girls brought in chairs and set them in the middle of the room.  A tray, of what looked like appetizers, was brought in and set down upon a small table.  As we looked closer the appetizers were not appetizing at all!  They were small slices of bread covered with pretzels, onions, cucumber, jam, cheese, ham, peppers, radish, tomatoes and who knows what other acts of random dining happened to land in that tray. 
 
To round off the oddity, my dad, Dick was crowned king and Brenda was crowned queen.  We were not sure of their responsibilities, but it looked pretty rigorous.
 
Then the music started. It was dark and ominous – punctuated with a didgeridoo. Yes there was one in the music, and the musician was not me! The room grew silent, well as silent as any camp room is. So it was a low-to-normal cacophony.
 
A single camper was led in blind folded. The camper was gently led down the steps to the garbage bags.  One of his guides whispered in his ear, and with a grimace he leapt forward as far as he could – jumping the garbage bags as if he was Indiana Jones crossing the pit with his whip. Upon his landing he was asked to remove his shoes, and he had to walk barefoot over the pine cones.  From there with a gleam in their eyes, his guides had him lie on his belly and begin army crawling between the chairs, obviously trying to navigate a narrow passage which did not exist.  Once the squeeze had been conquered he was brought to his feet before the tub of random biology.  Hesitantly, he lowered himself down and gently began slapping around, looking for the pool. With what may have been Polish profanity, he stuck his hand in and sloshed it around, but came up empty handed.

Directly to the nasty-tizers he was lead - where one of the slices of bread was placed in his mouth.  As a safety precaution, a camper held a bucket in front of his face in case he decided not to eat it!  The blindfold was then removed and he was given a certificate by the king and queen of camp. This went on until all of the newbie campers had been initiated. 
 

Journal prepared by Greg