Second Week Adventures for Language Camp #2

It's Saturday already and I've not said much about the second week of the language camp and do need to write it about it now for the third language camp of my summer begins officially tomorrow.I have been busy this week with activities  from about 8 AM to 9 PM each day and then going off to the work room to plan the next day's classes. That didn't leave much time for writing a blog.

Last week we usually taught two classes and then joined altogether for another two classes doing things such as presentations about states or countries in which we have lived, leading songs, or doing dances such as the Chicken Dance or YMCA.

Earlier this week some of us went to Treblinka. This is always a moving experience. We shared time at the memorial there with high school age young people who may have been doing a Jewish Poland tour or perhaps were doing a Jewish camp experience. 

This concentration camp was totally destroyed by the Nazi forces. What is there now is a representation done entirely in stone.

A visit begins with an audio presentation. The video below shows the simplicity of this and includes only the introductory music.

 The photo below shows what the gravel pit looks like today. This is a place where people were forced to work 12 hours a day with little food and frequent beatings.

 I was thinking that nature is reclaiming this place of  horror and trying to again to make it a place of beauty. Then I turned around and saw the butterfly.

We returned to camp for a different kind of evening. The campers presented Talent Show #2.
The video below shows the final act: the camp director and the sports director doing their Johnny Cash routine.

Another afternoon we went into Siedlce to the museum that holds religious art. This museum holds an El Greco painting which was found about 40 years ago in a nearby church attic The director of the museum does a tour ahead of viewing this painting to explain how to "read" the old paintings for their symbolism. Placing the painting into content truly does make the seeing the El Greco more meaningful.

Thursday afternoon I was invited to the home of a camper/student I've known both from the Reymontowka and Zakopane camp. He and his family provided us with a lovely afternoon of great Polish food and a tour of their lovely farmstead. On the way back to Reymontowka we stopped at the farm of one of his grandmothers. She asked if we would like to taste the milk from her cows. So we had a cup of wonderful icy cold milk. At my student's home his father had given us cranberry vodka. I doubt I'll even again have an afternoon when I have both cranberry vodka and fresh cow's milk!

My student is on the left, next his mother, then two volunteers from Kansas City, and finally I'm on the right.

And how could I forget -- we also had camp weddings this week. Someone told me this is a Reymontowka tradition, but some of the university students here working as counselors told me they had seen camp weddings in other places, too.

The first time I saw this, my jaw did drop. Now I enjoy all the fun. The video above shows one of my students getting "married." The funniest thing this year was the boy that turned to his "bride" and asked, Prosze(can't do the Polish alphabet right in blogger) -- meaning he needed to know what her name was!

And then came last night, the Final Program. This began with all the campers singing.

This was followed by a theatre performance with a theme of tolerance.
Next all our groups did an English presentation. Here is a video of one:

This group sang Farmer in the Dell. However, regretfully, my camera seemed to pick more of the ambient noise than the music.

Presentations were quite variable. One did the Sponge Bob song.

My group sang the Bingo song along with one verse of This Land is Your Land using places in Poland.

After the program we all went to the bonfire area for kielbasa.

 This morning we had breakfast at 6:30 and then took volunteers to the airport. In Warsaw we went to two hotels to pick up new volunteers who had arrived earlier this week. Language Camp #3 begins officially tomorrow.

So that's what I've been doing. Hope you enjoyed hearing about this.