This is my first time on a computer in a long time, a lot has been going on since adventure Thursday (by the way-the pictures of the cave and waterfall are up on facebook now. And the person who took them is named Jo Maslen, she said anyone can add her as a friend if they want to see the entire album). Finished the first week of english camp tonight, it has been going good. We had a couple and their two kids arrive last friday, they are helping out along with two teenagers from England and 10 people from Georgia. I have really enjoyed being around other people who speak English, they have been such an encouragement to everyone here. Monday was the first night, we had about 180 kids because we allowed some of the ones who signed up on the waiting list to come. And during what we call "promo time" before camp actually started, I did the most disgusting thing, I have done nothing more gross my entire life. When I volunteered for the game, they did not tell me all the details.
Myself and another guy stood in front of all the kids and we each had someone standing behind us under a sheet. I had my arms behind my back and my partner had his arms out where people could see them. And the start of the game was not bad at all, he washed my face, tried to brush my teeth, tried to pour and feed me a bowl of cereal, shave my face with a fake razor and whipped cream. All the kids were laughing really hard and it was a good time, but then the game took a drastic turn for the worse. One of the staff came out and they announced on the microphone that they were going to now show everyone where ninjas and samurai warriors got their power (Chinese theme for camp). He then took a huge bite of a banana, chewed it for a while, then spit it into a cup. Then he swished some milk and juice around in his mouth and spit it in the same cup. Then he had a few big spoonfuls of peanut butter and honey, chewed them up and spit them into the same cup with everything else. By now people have already left the room and most look sick. No one was laughing. They stirred the cup up with a spoon and then poured myself and the other guy playing the game a cup and we had to drink it. Do to the fact that Bosnians are very concerned with preventing illness to the extreme where they never wear shoes into a house or allow cross breezes, none of the kids thought we would actually drink it. And none of our fellow staff thought we would either. So guess what...we did. It was completely nasty. I have seen people do less gross things for large amounts of money, and I did this for free. Whats really funny is that the woman who was in charge of the game, apologized after saying "Zac - I am so sorry we used a banana, I forgot you dont like them" She was dead serious too. I told her the banana was not the problem, it was the fact that it was chewed up by someone else and spit in a cup. It could of been the best ingredients ever and I still would have felt sick. I was surprised that I was able to drink it without throwing up, I was almost certain I was going to puke it all over the front row of kids. I do feel like I have gained some respect around here by doing it though haha.
English camp is much different from adventure camp for multiple reasons. One is that there is almost 4 times as many kids and also they are much younger. The crowd at adventure camp was teenagers who wanted to hang out and have fun, they also spoke fairly good English. The English camp kids dont come to hang out with us, and for some odd reason, a lot of the boys in my group like to not listen to myself or the other captain. For example, I ask them to walk up the steps, and they run up the driveway towards the road. Or we ask them not to touch each other in music class and the one punches the other one in the face. We just need to remember to have extra patience when we are dealing with them. Tuesday we got to visit a boy, his mom and dad are actually housing 4 of the people visiting. We sat and talked about everything, we also went out to ice cream with one of the kids in our group, she was very shy, so it didnt go according to plan. We would ask her questions like "If you could have any pet as an animal, what would it be?" - Her answer "I dont know - Im allergic to some animals ". Or "what is your favorite thing to eat?"- Her answer "I dont know, I like a lot of food". So I could tell she wasnt big on answering questions and I did not want her to feel like we were interrogating her so I asked her if she had any questions she wanted us to answer or any information about us that she wanted to know. Her answer "No". Haha we are visiting a boy Monday though who loves to talk, also love to touch our faces when he is trying to emphasize a point. A little creepy but it will be fun, he wants us to play ping-pong with him after.
The weather here has been nice lately, its good to see the sun. There have been people swimming in the river a lot lately. A few nights ago I was hanging out with some guys downtown, and some where messing around on a guitar but my friend and I were talking about just random things. Anywhere from pet fish to how American carpet is glued to the floor in most places. When all of a sudden my friend got really annoyed, and said we had to leave. I asked him why we were leaving and he said our other friend was getting on his nerves. I was completely lost because the dialogue they had was not in English. But he later told me that the guy told him I was just asking those questions because I was making fun of how Bosnians live. It made me feel bad because that was the last thing I was trying to do. But I can understand why he felt that way because he was only picking up bits and pieces of our conversation and his English is not very good. I wish my friend would have explained to him the truth instead of just getting annoyed and leaving. I would not have come here this summer if my goal was to make fun of how they live.
Time is going by really fast, I cant believe I will be going home in a few weeks, I know saying goodbye to some of the people I have met here will be hard. I have had two boys ask me when I planned on leaving, when I said August the one said "What will I do when you leave, you must come back". Its strange how I never considered things like saying goodbye to close friends when I was planning to go on this internship. It will be a sad day, because I dont know if I will ever see these kids again. I am looking forward to going home, I wish I could be on vacation with my family this week, I miss them.
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