English Summer Camp!

I had a week long English summer camp in my village last week. There were about 50 students that were involved, a great group of PCVs, my awesome director, and a few onlookers that completely supported the camp. It was a ton of fun and now I want to have another one for my younger students. I had a smaller group of older girls (mainly from my older English club, 10-11th form) that were there in the morning. I split the day up into morning and afternoon camps, with my older girls becoming junior counselors in the afternoon for the 7th, 8th, and 9th form students.

One day was rained out but the 6 others had perfect weather! On Sunday we took a hike out to the small church/religious spot that is about an hour walk outside of town. It was really fun because we had a picnic while we were there. In typical Armenian fashion, each student brought one item to share with the rest of the group. We had hotdogs, hard boiled eggs, sausage, fried potatoes, greens, tomatoes, cucumber, bread and cheese. We sat under the sun at the top of a hill and I just soaked it all in.

This camp really made me feel a part of my community more so than anything else. Having about 15 volunteers come through at different times and introducing them to my director, students, and CP was a lot of fun because it brought both of my PC worlds together. I am pretty sure some of my girls were smitten with a few of the counselors which was fun to see. I remember having a crush on one of my counselors when I was their age. Fun to see.

One final point about my camp was that it was cheap. With the help of other volunteers, my director, and my students, the total cost for this 7 day camp was about 10,000 dram (roughly 30 dollars). That was mostly for the paper supplies. And now we will have another one at the end of July. After that is a English teacher workshop and then I am done... (panic, panic, panic)

I will try and upload some pictures soon.