Weds., July 22, 2009
Hey guys!
Yesterday was quite an experience. After classes, Dasha took me to a summer camp where her older cousin works about 30 minutes from the city. There were about 400 kids staying there, and all of them were really interested in meeting an American, even though they heard English and assumed I was an Englishman! They were all interested in learning about Americans and our culture, and I thought it is the perfect place to expand our LE program. The director showed us around the camp and we had tea with him, and he was asking me if I thought it was possible to get American kids in the camp, or if I thought LE would be interested.
There are many summer camps in Russia, supplemented by the government to make it affordable. It costs about $100 for each student to attend for 21 days, including room and board, which is really cheap for a summer camp. It also was the nicest camp I have ever seen, and was outstanding for America, let alone Russia. I know that Learning Enterprises usually works with a class in a classroom, but we try to steer away from generic, formal teaching and genuinely work to get kids interested in learning English and learning about American and English culture. Working with a camp would give us the opportunity to touch the lives of hundreds of children at once rather than a few dozen, and we would live side by side with them rather than just seeing them for a few hours a day. What better way to have a croos-cultural exchange? There are also 3 21 day seasons, so we have the opportunity to work with 2 groups of kids, ranging anywhere from 8-18 years old. Furthermore, if LE threw 3 or 4 volunteers in there, they wouldn’t have to worry about finding host families or any of that other nonsense, and there is no commuting to school for the volunteers. It’s a win-win situation of you ask me; A REALLY easy opportunity for us to expand (hint hint to those of you LE big dogs reading this. *cough cough Katrina cough*).
Anyway, back to the story. The camp director showed us everything—he was really proud of his camp, and for good reason. He also showed us his house and American car.
Since the kids at the camp are going home in a few days, they were throwing a disco party for them, so we went too. After about 50 kids asked for my autograph and danced with me, the older kids came in and they started to play dance music. They all like English music, but almost all of them don’t understand it, especially because music in a foreign language is more difficult to comprehend than speaking in a foreign language because of the slang. One song came on, and the lyrics the whole way through were “suck my d***, suck my mother f***ing d***.” I was petrified and left the dance floor immediately, as the 11 year old children were rocking out to this song. Dasha, our English speaking Russian, was still dancing and gave me a look that essentially said “Why aren’t you out here dancing?” I pulled my ear, and she listened intently to the music as she was dancing. All of the sudden, her dancing slowed and then stoped completely, and there she is, standing still on the middle of the dance floor with her jaw dropped. It was so funny. I’m just glad the kids didn’t understand. What a stupid DJ!
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