June 20, 2008 || Origami, Full Day

So we skipped out on morning exercises today to sleep in (you only have to go if you're leading the exercises, like Desiree and I are tomorrow). It's a good thing, too, because after planyorka yesterday we needed the extra rest.
Planyorka? After all the campers go to bed, the counselors get together and plan out the next day. This is planyorka. Yesterday our meeting started around 11, but I didn't crawl into bed until almost 1. We planned out the day, then sat around having tea and syshki while playing a game of Jenga that lasted, no joke, at least an entire hour. I've never met people so good at Jenga, either! Then again, we were playing for who would "rover" the kids during quiet time, making sure they were taking naps.
Anyway, back to today. I got my first gift at breakfast! From a little girl with whose group we sang yesterday. As far as I can tell it's a bundle of grass tied with another piece of grass, but I am actually really thankful for it--it was one of those "I don't really know what I'm eating for breakfast and I'm still tired and there was no toilet paper in the bathroom" days that instantly turned into "Ah! I'm making friends! They like me!" kind of ecstatic days. Hopefully I have more of the latter and less of the former.
After breakfast Desiree and I sat in on 3 origami lessons--I've gotten pretty good at the paper crane, if I do say so myself, but the cobra was beyond me. Furthermore, one pocket of my coat is stuffed with paper hearts and cranes and such that some of the other girls gave me--again, making me feel like this going to be a great experience. After that Sergei showed us how they make chain mail--they roll metal into coils, then clip the coils and somehow join them all--17,000, he said. He took us to a room in the back of the Club building, where we foud Masha, our new roommate (she's really cool and has done a lot of things--she hung pictures she'd taken over her bed and let us do the same with her extras, and cuts her tape on a hiking knife), a few other people, and all the climbing gear--and of course, the chain mail. On one wall hung at least 20 gas masks--I can't ever get over how eerie gas masks are. And in a setting like this, it reminded me of "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" and Omon Ra all at the same time. I don't know. Between the gas masks and Sadako I wish there was no such thing as war.
After this we'll have karate, and then we'll perform our fan dance again (you can see a picture of us in costume at that link I gave for Carolina/Girl Camp on day 2, page 4 I think--we're all in kimonos, that should make us easier to spot). I'm not sure where the rest of the night will take us, but tomorrow Desiree and I are leading a class, titled simply "Sport." It's so weird to think that I've only been 8 days gone.. it feels like a lifetime, if only because I'm so removed from everything back home (hint, hint... comments/e-mails would make me super happy).
Alright, I'm going to go grab a nap before night activities/karate, and let Desiree get online. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze out a little bit of time online every day. =) But then again, it's Russia, so the Internet is prone to stop working for no reason all the time.