Yay Kamp the Sequel, Week One...

After months of planning and preparation, the big event was finally here! On July 6, 2009, Yay Kamp the Sequel began. With the help of 15 student leaders and PCVs Kat Zigmont, Whitney Bey, Sara Nevius, Rachel Wurdeman, Amy Todd, Linde Gies, Josh Neese-Todd, the project Jaclyn and I have spent so much time preparing for was off to a great start.

I can't say enough about how great our student leaders are. The student leaders are secondary school or university students who have excellent English. They have all kinds of backgrounds - a few who just returned from a year-long exchange program in America, a few who are preparing to go to America, and a few who are just really talented and really eager to be involved. They help us with translation and classroom management and keeping the kids enthused. Their enthusiasm and excitement is incredible - and completely contagious!

At 10 a.m. about 108 students arrived for the first week of camp - Environmental Awareness Week. They were all quickly sorted into groups, and then it was off to the classrooms to begin the day. One of the first things each group did was choose a team name. We ended up with the Tigers, the Flying Eagles, the Big Strong Dragon, Black King Lion, and Fiery Red Dragon.

The plan for Environmental Week was for the kids to have fun, of course, but also to get them thinking about taking care of the environment. Azerbaijan isn't exactly the best when it comes to environmental awareness, so this was a pretty important message to get across to the kids. We did all kinds of activities and games to get the students thinking about the environment.

The first day we had a nature scavenger hunt. We gave the kids a list of things that belong in nature and things that don't belong in nature that they had to find. The team that found them first won. Pretty exciting that the group I was working with for the week - Fiery Red Dragon - won!

The second day was our planting day. We made plant holder out of one-liter soda bottles. We decorated them with stickers and pictures from magazines and glitter glue and all kinds of other fun crafty stuff. We let them dry during recess, and then planted flower seeds. Side note - trying to buy dirt in the bazar gets a lot of laughs from the azeris you ask and the others who are watching you! But the student loved it! Everyday they watered their plants and looked to see if they were sprouting yet. By Thursday, a few of them had little sprouts!

Day 3 was the trash pick up. Not any Azerbaijana's favorite activity by a long shot, but by making it a competition we get all of the students to work really hard at it. We had plastic gloves, provided by the Peace Corps Azerbaijan Environmental Committee so that is wasn't as gross as it could be. A leader from each group kept count of the number of bags their students collected. Some kids got really in to it. We had 45 minutes to pick up as much as we could. In that time, we picked up 436 bags of trash. Pretty impressive, huh? The winners of that activity were the Flying Eagles. They were ecstatic!

Our last day of the week was the day we made Trash Monsters. This was by far my favorite activity. Each group had a bag of trash that they had accumulated in the classroom through out the week. They had to use the stuff in that bag to make a creature - or Trash Monster. At first the kids were kinda of grossed out. But, then, they started to get into it. And their creativity went wild! Plastic gloves became hair, bottles became arms and legs, old nail polish bottles became a nose. The monsters were AWESOME! Each group named their monster, and after recess, the PCVs and Student Leaders voted on the best name and the best monster. The Black King Lion monster won as best monster. The best name came from Big Strong Dragon. It was "Our Miss Michael Jackson Snake". How could you not vote for a name like that?

All in all week one was great! The students had fun, and I think learned something. They're all really excited about coming back next week. Sharing this with Jaclyn has meant that I've been less stressed this week that I was last year and I've had a lot of fun. I can't thank the PCVs who helped enough. They were amazing and without them, Yay Kamp just wouldn't be possible.

Tune in next week to read about week two - Sports and Games!