english camp..

so its hard to believe that i have been here for so long already.. i really feel like i just got off the plane in san fransisco but that has already been well over a month and a half ago.. time really does seem to fly by.. crazy..

so lets see i updated this past weekend.. and ive been trying to keep up regular updates because i feel like i am slacking and i know that some people really love reading this blog.. lord knows why.. im really not that interesting..

so.. this week is our last week of bahasa indonesia class.. pretty exciting.. its also one of those momentus landmarks meaning we are halfway through with PST and next week we find out where we are going and all sorts of fun info.. Yesterday i talked with Betsy, someone on the staff and she said that some people may get to have photos of their new families.. i would love that.. to be prepared seeing their face.. but at the same time i think its almost like finding out the sex of a baby.. do you really wanna know or do you want to be surprised? haha i love the analogy..

so today was interesting.. we had to put on an english camp and man on man.. it was crazy..

first of all.. we planned thinking that maybe tops 50 people MIGHT show up.. but really we were only expecting like 10.. Second we have like limited supplies.. again thinking that we arent going to have too many people coming to this thing.. i mean its a holiday.. who wants to go to school?

WRONG..

So Daniel has to go to the school we were using a little bit early to prepare his scavenger hunt.. at about 720 he texts us all saying there were about 10 children ready and waiting.. i thought to myself.. well odd.. thats like wayyy early (we planned on starting at 9..) so i told him to tell them to wait.. i mean how many more kids could show up an hour and a half early? i leave around 745 so i can get there at 8 and maybe prepare a little bit.. when i round the corner to the school all i see are little groups of children.. at this moment there might have been like 30.. maybe 40.. half of them were covering Daniel as he was trying to get his activity together..

so i see this mass of children and as im standing there even more are showing up.. Daniel and I start to think that just maybe the prinicipal of the school told the kids to come to this.. awesome.. i learned last night that there was like 900 students at this school.. really? what are we going to do with 900 students with only like 4 volunteers? so i told Daniel id be right back and i went down to Mary Ellens to warn her that we may have an influx of students.. she just laughed..

by the time we get back to the school the number of kids has doubled and still more are coming in.. mary ellen and i just laugh cuz i mean what else can you do? we start discussing little things that we can do like games or whatever and finally we pull out some paper and see if they want to draw.. so we lay the paper out and i pull out the crayons and markers and they just sit there.. we we walked away and finally some of the kids started up on the drawing.. The Mary Ellen and I start to throw the ball to each other saying english words and try to get more kids interested.. easier said than done.. first we are strangers and second we are trying to get them to speak english.. yeahhh.. but finally some brave children start to toss the ball with us and some of them were actually trying with the english words.. but eventually the enthusiam died out and we moved on to another game.. Red Rover..

Now who hasnt played this game as a kid? its fun.. for the most part.. trying to get indonesian children organized to play this game.. kinda like pulling teeth.. i think the language barrier had a lot to do with it.. and the fact that for some reason none of them would talk loud.. it was like whispering “red rover, red rover, g...... come over” and the name would just trail off.. how some of the kids even heard it was their turn, ill never know.. but soon they got the hang out if but i still had to say red rover red rover for them no matter what team i was on.. hah and then they all just started calling for me.. i wasnt seriously running so i never broke through anyones arms so i kept flip-flopping from one team to another.. finally i was like nope! pick someone new.. im staying here! but the kids enjoyed it.. maybe they will try to play again in the future.. it would be funny to walk by and see them playing.. so we played this for like 40 minutes.. in the sun.. it got pretty hot..

finally the game broke up and i just walked around trying to find something to do.. which was a lot harder than you would think.. but eventually i found myself in a room with a bunch of kids trying to do telephone.. which is a very simple game.. for the most part.. but it kinda just failed.. we had to keep yelling at the students not to cheat.. which they did every time we turned our backs.. of course my little brother was one of the ones who was cheating.. i had to keep yelling at him.. and he just smiled at me and said what? he’s so funny..

so after they started to lose interest in that and i couldnt think of anymore lines that were easy to say we started playing 7up.. we lost a few of the telephone players so then we had to play like 4up.. which in the beginning was fine but after awhile the people kept picking their friends and it was like a never ending game of giggles.. so after a billion rounds we started playing another game that was kind of like musical chairs but not.. but whatevs.. they had to translate something and then shout out a fruit and whoever was like an orange had to get up and find another chair.. it was interesting we had to keep changing it up because again people kept cheating.. number one my brother.. haha it was all very funny though..

finally the game ended and people started leaving.. it was the longest three hours of my life.. haha but it was fun.. for the most part..

but wow what a day.. whellppp im done so better get moving on..

love you all :)