Kid's Protection Day!

The past few days have been a COMPLETE and utter whirlwind of events. With our summer camp going on, and 3-4 hours of Russian each day...it makes for a very tired Lydia when I finally get home. This is not to say that I'm not enjoying myself, but my eyes ache to be shut right now.

Today is a big holiday in Ukraine (the running joke right now is that every weekend in May is a 3 or 4 day weekend because there are SO many holidays crammed into that month. I'm fully aware that it's not May today by the way...). It is June 1...also known as Kid's Protection Day. We celebrated with our kids from the school and the gymnasia in the park. I also need to explain how school works here in Ukraine...so let me back up a little.

School starts in September. I'm not quite sure how long their winter break is, but I know they have one. The last day of school was Friday, May 27 (remember the last bell ceremony?). On Monday (May 30), the kids start a 2 week "camp" where they go to school from 9 am-noon. I forget what this is called at the moment. Whoops. The idea is that they are outside of a classroom environment more and doing fun things. Sometimes they will take a bus to the river and have class out there. Other days, like today, everybody took part in Kid's Day activities at the park.

When we got to the park around 9:30(ish) this morning, there were supposed to be races going on. We had absolutely NO idea what the agenda was today. That's a common theme here in Ukraine...and we're learning to embrace it. The races didn't start until 10:15 am (another theme...flexible time schedules), and at that point we were merely observing. We saw some kids from our classes...said hello to them...and somewhat awkwardly observed from the sidelines. At some point, more students started coming to say hello to us. Remember that some of the kids here literally scream hello at us because it is the only word that they know in English. It is hard not to laugh at this because they put a strong emphasis on the "o" and kind of make their voice rise up at the end of the word. At one point, there were probably 10-12 girls crowded around talking to me...asking about holidays, birthdays, any words that they could think of in English and that I could respectively answer in Russian. Funny how they want to use English and I want to use Russian.

Around 10:30 people started gathering around a make-shift stage to watch a concert that was about to be put on. It started with a musical/play put on by kids age 12 and younger...wish I could tell you what it was about :) it was pretty cute. Then, more kids performed doing solo dance numbers, singing, etc. I went across the street at one point to get a bottle of water and came back to find that a new event was taking place. Cassi ran up and gave me her purse and Jamie's camera bag (by the way, I now know what it feels like to be the mom or dad who has to hold all of the purses while kids are running around playing games. Not fun.)...and I quickly followed her to see what was going on. They were forming teams and of course all of the girls we know had grabbed the two of them to be on their team. I had one of my seventh grade girls with me who doesn't enjoy playing games...so she stayed with me the entire time while we watched Miss Cassandra and Mr. Jamie play on the team (she talked to me in Russian the ENTIRE duration of the game...which was great practice. I learned that her favorite movie is Titanic and all of the Harry Potter's. Solid). Anywho, each team was made up of maybe 20 people...and the kids had to go to different stations in the park (sidenote: each station was situated at one of the freshly painted benches that we did as our community project. pretty cool!) and perform random tasks. In between each station (there were maybe 10 total?), the kids RAN from station to station holding hands in a long line. It was unbelievably hot outside (maybe not Oklahoma hot...but it definitely will be) and as their prizes at the end, everybody got ice cream and a bar of chocolate (there were boxes and boxes of Milka chocolate bars sitting waiting to be passed out. I had to restrain myself from taking one...). The station/team competition lasted for nearly 2 hours I think....and then we got to have Russian all afternoon!

I need to prepare for our last day of camp tomorrow. It's definitely been fun, but a lot (a LOT) of work and it's really hard to concentrate in Russian class when you've been hot and sweaty and running around with kids all day. I have a ton of pictures and video from today, but don't have time to upload them now. Will hopefully be able to at some point soon :) night night!