The surprises continue at Camp Rain on Your Parade. It's not a camp at all! No wonder we've been confused all summer. It's actually a sanatorium for children with chronic health problems. Which is funny, because I went through a program called Camp Counselors Russia, not Sanatorium Wardens Russia. Marina Vladimirovna, aka Number 3, the most hypersnickity woman I've ever met in my life (even when she talks to you face to face, she'll say, "Sem' nul nul" or "seven zero zero" instead of just "Sem' chasov" or "seven o'clock"), was telling me the other day how an Irish girl who was here last year thought it would be a camp and they'd be hiking all the time, and she spent a lot of time crying. She said it with a laugh as if to say, "What a maroon! Someone coming all the way to Russia to teach at a camp and expecting us to do fun camp stuff!"
Oh well. We've made the best of it and learned a lot and had some good times, but we are counting down the days by now. It will be fun to get back to Moscow and see how everyone else's camp experience went, and also satisfying to give Valeriy, the Russian director, an earful and hope that, if they send anyone else to Zolotoi Kolos, they give them a better idea of what to expect first.
Anyhow, the week after all the other counselors left, I worked with two really cool girls, Roxana and Katya, and my kids were so great. A group of all ages from a sportivnaya school in Tikhoretsk not far from Krasnodar. Most of them did tae kwon do and a few did boxing or gymnastics, and it seemed like they were actually there to have fun and not just make use of our medical facilities. Their trainers came, and we had a super fun week together. They taught me some TKD and spin kicks and I taught them some ju jitsu, and they were good students and good teachers. And this kid Roma, whenever he saw me he'd pretend to be a ninja but looked more like a little squirrel.
We did karaoke one day, and it was mostly Russian songs, and while they were singing I took the booklet and found some English songs in the back. I pointed to Don't Cry for Me Argentina and said, "I've had that song in my head for some reason." They got all excited and said something, and I nodded automatically, and next thing I knew I was standing in front of everyone with a microphone. The song was already playing, and what could I do but sing? The little girls humored me and said I had a pretty voice afterwards and the teenagers smirked good-naturedly, but oh well, it was fun. The kids Joslin had during the same week were from an orphanage in Krasnodar, and they all called Joslin "Joystick" and me "Pamela Anderson." They were some characters. I still miss the kids from that week a lot.
My new kids are also great, though. They're here for the long haul, three whole weeks, and they're from Siberia and northern Russia. They take themselves to the medical building every day but seem pretty normal for the most part. They probably just have things like sinus problems or other invisible maladies. I think they are around 15-17 years old, some quite a bit bigger than us vozhatiye (counselors), but all friendly and respectful and laid back. One of their little brothers came along, and he looks like an exact replica of his brother in half-size. His name's Ruslan and he has sparkly black eyes and is about as cute as kids get.
Someone wrote back and mentioned that I only write about the times we goof off and never about the actual work I do, but that is mostly because our normal days are such a routine. A schedule of our day is posted in every hall, and every day is the same: 9:00 breakfast, 9:30 sit on the beach, 1:00 lunch, sit in your room until 4:00, 4:00 snack, sit on the beach until 6:00, 7:00 supper, 8:00 concert or sports, 9:00 disco, 10:30 bed. In Russian, "sea" (morye) is spelled "MOPE," so it looks on the schedule like we mope around for about six hours every day, which isn't always entirely off the mark. Roxana and Katya already want to go home, and they've only been here about three weeks. The concerts have begun to be monotonous routines of karaoke and silly dances, and the fizruks usually take over the sports courts so the kids can only watch. Don't get me started on the disco... there's only so much Bryan Adams, Avril Lavigne, and bad Russian pop one can take, and they play the same songs every single night.
It's not like the days are bad. I'm sure there will be a day soon when I miss all the sitting on the beach and swimming in the waves and chatting and playing cards with kids, and all the fresh fruit, and all the time to exercise at sunset while the disco's going on, and it has given me time to read almost the entire Bible that Joslin brought with her as well as most of my Lonely Planet: Istanbul to Cairo on a Shoestring. I've always wanted to read the Bible for myself (it figures rather prominently in my culture after all), and right now before I'm about to head to Egypt and other places nearby, it seems like a good time to do it. The Old Testament was good reading, fairly human, lots of good stories, although a bit brutal and hypocritical sometimes. Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon are quite class. The New Testament... what can you say... it is a bit preachy. I suppose that's the point, though.
So, I'll write instead about our days off. Krasnodar was rainy, but it gave us time to sit in a cafe and share a divine zapekanka iz tvoroga so smetanoi. We'd had the little cakes made of tvorog with smetana at the camp cafeteria, and I loved them, but it turned out I loved them because they were but a shadow of the glory of this zapekanka. It was like cheesecake but lighter and denser, more like food, less sweet, but with sweet creamy smetana on top and tart little fruits baked into the bottom... heaven. The Kuban' River, an easy walk from the center of town, was lovely, wide and lazy with cattle grazing on the grassy banks and kids seining for minnows with an old lace tablecloth by the bridge.
When we got back to camp we decided to check out what the beach was like at night, and it turns out Novomikhailovsky actually has a bit of a nightlife. There are tent cafes set up all along the beach, some with dance floors and live music, and the water feels warmer and clearer at night. The twilight sky turns everything, including the white stones along the beach, a lovely dusky purple-blue.
I went to one of the cafes and saw "kofye po-russky" on the menu, and it was kind of expensive, so I ordered it hoping it would be some kind of decent coffee. Luckily the waitress warned me that it was just NesCafe with vodka in it, so I ordered the milk cocktail instead. The milk coctail was just milk and grenadine with whipped cream on top, but creamy and refreshing enough. Since them we've spent many evenings wandering along the purple stones.
Our next day off we spent just chilling in Novo, having breakfast at our favorite cafe and then hiking the south fork of Novo's river. We went several miles along it, exploring clear pools and cascades and muddy frog holes and grassy banks and apple orchards and rusted half-buried cars and chatting with cowherds. That night we hiked south along the beach to a promontory from which we watched one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen, all reflected diffusely off the waves while the rain fell softly. It was one of those perfect, simple days.
This week we bussed to Gelendzhik, situated in a half-moon-shaped bay south of Novorossisk. It had a sandy beach and the same cafes that are everywhere in Russia, and we met a woman from Krasnodar whose daughter had moved to Ohio but was back visiting for a week, and we all chatted for a while. She said three years ago you could barely find a place to buy a drink, and now there are cafes and bars everywhere. Russians have more money to travel these days, so more and more things are getting set up to cater to tourists. To me this makes things much less interesting. Every tourist town starts to look the same. But you just have to try a little harder to learn something interesting and unique about a place.
A couple of T-shirts I liked: "Chicago Bulls BOSTON World Cup" and "Once we had LOGO." Still nothing makes me laugh like that goofy boxing coach from Tikhoretsk and his "SUCKER WEAR" shirt.
Ten more days and we take the 32-hour train back to civilization. I would really love to hear from all of you.
Pam