June 25, 2008 || Vozhatii Zhaklin!

Alright, so I survived having a group of girls to control yesterday. It wasn't so much that they were badly-behaved (they weren't) but that I was constantly stressing that I would make a mistake, someone would be late to their photo shoot, or someone would accidentally get hurt. I didn't want to be the cause of anything bad happening, then they'd be like "Oh those darn Americans, you can't trust them with anything"--actually, they probably wouldn't have said anything like that since this place is nothing but a constant self-esteem drip, but you know.
"Try your best" really seems to count here--everything I've done, and for most of the girls, too, as long as we've tried, we've pretty much gotten standing ovations. Effort actually MEANS something here. In America, I often feel like when we say "Well, you did your best," there's an unspoken "but you lost anyway" tagged onto the end of it.
After I last posted, I ran around taking the girls to their photoshoots and catwalk class, and keeping the remainder busy. Part of that entailed letting them paint my nails all different colors. "Klyova," as they would say. Later I went to bed early, since it'd been a tiring day, after playing Skip-Bo with some of the girls next door. One of them, Natasha, was on TV giving an interview about Robin Hood camp yesterday! That was pretty cool, seeing Misha and Egor on TV and all.
Speaking of Misha, between him and Nastya and Kristina it seems that all of Robin Hood is sick. He was just walking around the dorm all day with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and Nastya's had this nasty cold ever since we got here, so all I can do is try to choke down some airborne and hope I don't get sick.
Today we taught sport again,with the youngest group and then with one of the oldest. Poor Natasha! She's probably so far my favorite counselor, but running after 20 8-year-olds all day is hard work. It always seems like one is wandering off to go play in the dirt somewhere. Well, Natasha or our Olga, who helps us out all the time. She found a boombox for our second Sport class, and we kind of stood in the back of our Pioneerball team and danced to the Spice Girls and Aqua. I am soooo glad I made a 90s mix, let me tell you.
Gleb brought me his plate today, that was cool; then again, he brought it and then proceeded to tell me something else about how Misha still liked me, thanks buddy. Lunch was great today: I can't tell you how nice it is when all of the things line up. Desiree and I walk into each meal going "Okay, I hope we have the good tea--I hope we have the good soup--I hope we're eating something other than kasha" and then it's kind of a crapshoot as to whether we'll get anything we like. Days where there's good soup + good tea + good meal = a 5-star day.
Later tonight we've got another disco, to which Desiree and I plan on being a bit late, since constant dancing for an hour and a half is a little much, both for the body and for the class. Right now the staff room is very quiet, Misha's leaning back just watching things, Valya's checking out some websites, Victor's looking at his photos, and Igor's playing guitar over in the corner... quiet time (tixii chas) is probably my favorite time of day... you can walk all around camp and see the counselors/staff quietly doing their own relaxing things, you can hear the children talking softly out the windows, and everything is just... tixii, I suppose. Oh! And there's no music!
Have I talked about that yet? I apologize if I have, but you get to hear about it again. The Russians are crazy about techno. Now, I knew this, but I didn't realize it extended to camp life, too. Every morning at 8am we awake to hours blaring from the speakers. And all through the day, during lessons, in between lesson changes, we listen to the music Adir and Kostya choose to play.. which is basically the equivalent of what you'd find in a Russian club. It gives a very dream-like quality to the entire camp. I mean, how can you really feel like you're living real life when there's a soundtrack to it? Even at night, around 8 or so when I go out to write in my journal, there's still snares and synthesizers bouncing off the trees all around me. There's just absolutely no way of truly describing this to you... it gets under your skin, and you don't even realize you're swaying along to some woman just belting her heart out until the song's over.
Anyway, I think that's enough for today. I got invited to go visit some of the girls during their quiet time, but I think I'd better go catch a nap and work on my stuff for my "Secret Friend" first. Oh! That game is turning out to be a lot of fun, by the way. My friend gave me a "vase" (read: big plastic cup) filled with flowers, and a lovely note attached to a jar of "night cream" (I haven't quite figured out what to do with it yet, but I'm going to take my dictionary to its label tonight). I feel bad that I can't give Nadya anything aside from handmade signs--although I'm thankful to Vika and the Robin Hood group for helping us out--again, I'm sorry if I've already spoken about this, the ctrl+f search function isn't working, so I can't find what I've said and what I haven't.
Haha, Igor just strummed "Smoke on the Water"--it's so interesting to listen to people who don't know English sing English songs. I wonder how I sound when I try to sing along with DDT, Zveri, or Vysotski--probably pretty funny.