Hey all, internet's rather a horror to get here, there's only one internet terminal in town and half the time it's not working, and the other half we have to wait at least half an hour for it, usually more, and meanwhile if we're on for any length of time we're holding up everyone in town who might want it. I'll probably be able to manage it once a week at most. But please write if you can, it is really fabulous to hear from home.
Things are much better at camp now. The first time I wrote, I'd only been here a few overcast days and was having to seriously adjust my expectations for the summer. Now that that's over with, I'm really appreciating where I am. The hills are lovely lush green, the air is fresh, there's loads of fresh berries and produce for cheap in town (every time I come to town I buy a cup of juicy homegrown sun-ripened raspberries or mulberries), and even the food at camp is getting better, and I bought some walnuts so I can skip the mystery meat whenever it comes up.
Actually the worst thing about the first few days of camp was working with Irina, this girl who always made sure she got the best bits of food for herself, sometimes at the expense of the kids, and couldn't seem to grasp the fact that I understood some Russian but not all of it. She'd say something very simple and I'd nod, and then she'd launch into a complicated compound sentence about the next three places I was supposed to be, and when I didn't understand, she'd uselessly repeat it the same way and then get frustrated when I still didn't understand it. Furthermore when I did understand it, I'd be somewhere when she said to be there, and she'd tell me I was late so they ate without me or whatever. It was a nightmare and made me feel depressed and anxious all the time. I only had three days in her group, and in that time I fell in love with the kids and some of us were hugging and crying before the buses took them away, but I was never so happy to lose a coworker.
Now I'm working with dear sweet Dina and Svetlana the Sexpot who never met a mirror she didn't like. Dina's my roommate and we get along well, and Svetlana's harmless. She wears inch-long nails and spike heels and always does this undulating butt-shaking half-naked Arabian dance at one of our many "concerts" whenever the new kids come. She's really good, and it doesn't seem so odd when put in perspective. People don't wear many clothes here, it's pretty normal to walk around in a bikini top or backless or strapless shirt, painted-on hot pants or short shorts, and at the beach even the Santa Claus lookalike director strips down to his baggy red and yellow speedos. Some of the boys wear Adidas rip-off shirts (Adibas?) or shirts with funny bits of English like, "Buys That Will SPORT BEST" or "Lovely Dog."
The kids at the camp in general are around 6-16 and arranged into otread's of about 40 kids with three counselors each. Each group comes for three weeks at a time. Mine are 9 to 11 and I can't imagine a better group of kids. They are funny and smart and curious and self-possessed and straightforward and talented and humble, and they have loads of personality and lose themselves in laughter or amazement at things like waves and dead jellyfish and cartwheels. The don't form cliques or exclude anyone or pick on anyone (they fight, but good-naturedly and with everyone). It amazes me the seeming inevitability with which they will become... well, more like us. Practical and accepting of many absurdities and taking all the cool stuff everywhere for granted. I really wonder what they'll all end up doing as adults, and also what a lot of adults were like as kids.
It's hard to remember everyone's name, though, and I feel kind of bad for that. I know a lot of them pretty well, but it seems they're all named Pasha or Dasha or Masha or Sasha. It's not unusual to say, "Where's Maxim?" and two Maxims raise they're hands and neither is the one you want. I swear one of these days I'll go to a Russian bookstore and pick up a baby name book, and it'll have about a page and a half in it. I remember kids better by the nicknames I give them in my head. There's a kid who doesn't so much talk to people as narrate whole paragraphs in their direction really fast, and I call him Mile-a-Minute. Double Dribble is the kid who does so shamelessly and then gets really mad when other people do. Maxim Number One must be a mafia kid, 'cause he gets special privileges and is always looking out for an easy deal or a quick win, but even he is respectful and good-natured. I like to play basketball with the boys and walk around answering the girls' questions or trying to throw rocks further than this one little slip of a girl with a mad arm. The boys always want me to play bball and soccer with them, and the girls always want me to dance at our nightly discoes, so I'm rarely at a loss for what to do.
We have a concert most night made up of acts that kids and counselors put together, sometimes really good, sometimes embarassingly bad, sometimes funny for all the wrong reasons. One girl did a whole gymnastics routine on a carpet onstage wearing sandals. A girl in our otread' named Zhenya (She calls herself Jane for my benefit but I affectionately call her Showboat in my mind because she was always showing off and trying to impress me at first) does a cool floor routine with dancing and gymnastics, and I swear she has six-pack abs. Another girl does Argentine tango, and she takes such joy in it and does it so well that it makes me feel happy for a long time afterwards. It's amazing the difference between the people who dance to get the moves down and concentrate so hard they have a look almost of pain on their face, and the people who take the moves utterly for granted as a vehicle for expression and just have fun.
At the other end of the spectrum is karaoke when the girl didn't even know the words and the counselors doing bad slapstick with a preset soundtrack of various sound clips running in the background. There's one where a traditional-looking guy wearing a bowtie and a gangsta-wannabe with a ghetto blaster are crossing words via the sound clips, and one of the sound clips is an angry guy with accented English yelling, "...and you can get another piece of pussy of equal or lesser value for only a penny. See if you can beat pussy for a penny! If you can find cheaper pussy anywhere..."
It would be bad enough if it were anyone else, but it's the boss of the counselors. And it would be bad enough if he only said it once, but he says in three times in succession, faster and faster, while Joslin and I look on in delighted horror and no one else seems to know what's going on, but whoever did it must know. (Joslin's the South African girl and the only other native English speaker for miles.)
The weather's warmed up nicely, and the kids get to swim in the sea now, making it a lot more enjoyable. Counselors can swim, too, and now that some storms have passed, the waves are big enough to be exciting but not too dangerous. The sea is a lovely seafoam green fading through aquamarine to deep sea blue, and the kids like to lay out or build towers with the smooth flat rocks when they're not swimming, and when they are swimming they scream with delight at the waves.
The other day near the beach I noticed a car that had a crudely lettered sign in the front that said exactly, "TAKCN." In Russian the "N" is supposed to be backwards, making it an "i" sound. Also, I noticed a hole in the front just under the hood, and realized the body of the car was made of pressboard. I'd seen a movie once, Yugoslavian I think, where a pig was eating an abandoned car, but this was the first one I'd seen that was actually edible.
And meanwhile I've worked out a lot of things, like when we get days off (once a week) and how to hydrate myself. All we get at meals are syrupy juices or super sweet tea, and I was turning into a prune until someone told me the tap water was good, and I've been drinking lots of it since. Bottled water is expensive and tap water is usually not good in cities, so most Russian subsist on tea for their hydration, which seems like madness to me. My Russian is still improving and the loads of free time that could make this camp rather boring give me time to study Russian, talk to the kids, play sports, and work out morning and evening, and the long stretches of time on the beach are meditative when they're not lots of fun. Joslin and I will use our free days to explore the parks and waterfalls and valleys and whatever else we can find around here.
OK, gotta go, they're gonna tar and feather me if I take any more internet time. Write if you can.
Pam