Camp

Hi Guys!

I just got back from a fun four days at at a Russian summer camp! It is a camp owned by our university, so most of the people there were students at the Linguistics University, and almost all were learning English. It was a lot of fun. The camp was about an hour and a half out of the city, and it was in the woods, as were many, many, many mosquitoes. Russian mosquitoes, it should also be noted, are ENORMOUS. There was also a lake and a nice beach where we swam some, but it was a man-made lake leftover from the Soviet era, and it was very shallow, so it was kind of hard to swim. You could probably walk all the way across it. We took boats across the lake to go berry-picking one day, and we also did things like have a sand-castle building contest, and sing American karaoke for the Russian students. It was nice to relax- we celebrated the 4th of July there, and we had to make a short skit telling the history of the 4th of July for all the Russian students. We attempted to sing the National Anthem in the middle of it, not too successfully. We still had class there, but less frequently, and they were more low-key. On the last day there, in our history class, we learned that it was Ivan Kupala Day (an old Russian pagan god.) Apparently, people celebrate Ivan Kupala Day by having beach parties! I was in a cabin with 3 other girls in our group, and our cabin was literally located right next to the beach. We got to our cabin late, after our evening camp activities, and our cabin was shaking from the music they were playing. It was as if someone had placed loudspeakers in every corner of the tiny cabin. So at first it was fun- they were playing American pop music that we all knew, so we danced along in our cabin, and then we got tired, so we just kind of sat in the main room in the dark and talked (and really confused our Resident Director when she came to check on us.) The music got progressively worse, and progressively louder as the night wore on. We ended up falling asleep probably around 4 am once it ended. Looking back on it, it's actually hilarious, but I am very, very tired.

Today we left the camp, and we spent the day touring around a small Russian town called Gorodets. It was really pretty, and we visited a museum entirely of samovars! That's not something you see every day.

Then we took a bus back to the university, where each of us got on our local buses to go home. "Home" as in our host families' houses. It was kind of odd, after spending 4 days with our group of Americans outside of the city, to be going "home"- except it's not really home, it's someone else's home in an entirely different country! But I am really settling in well, and having a great time.

More soon!

Nina