Winter Holidays in the AFS Camp

Children all other the world like winter holidays. It’s a great time for fun. Some pupils of school #1 visited an AFS camp, where they were taught foreign languages, and had a chance to make new friends. Today they share their impressions.

Elena Kulikova, a teacher of English, school #1

Hi, everybody!
I am Elena Kulikova, a teacher in school # 1 and by the way an AFS volunteer. Every year AFS organizes a Winter camp for Russian and foreign pupils during school winter holidays. It is a very good tradition because I think it’s a great chance for children from different countries to communicate, to make friends, to learn a lot of new things about the world and just to have fun.
This year a group of pupils from our school have been to this camp. We had a great time there. Every day we learned different languages: German, Italian, Thai, Spanish. We learned songs, poems and even performed national fairy tales in those languages. We were divided in groups and every day we had to create different kinds of performances (fairy tales, musicals, presentations of different countries…)
I think these activities helped children understand that you shouldn’t wait for somebody to come and make your life better. You make your own decision what kind of life you are going to have.

Alessandro Bussato, an Italian student

Camp in Moscow: the camp was so cool, I really like it! For now I think it was the best camp I had in Russia. The accommodation was good clean, the food was nice and all people were friendly and cool and the volunteers, too. Well, especially I liked the program, the exchange languages, disco all night, the lessons of dance and our presentations.
The camp was beautiful, but I think if there were more free time and the alarm in the morning were later and sweet, it’ll be better.

Kate Volnova, school #1

There were people of different countries in this camp. Thailand, Italia, Germany, Spain, USA and Russia. There was a boy from Thailand. We danced waltz, tango and salsa together, we were taught them in the camp. Every evening we had presentations, and we didn’t have enough time to stay in our rooms on the afternoon. We were always moving. We played outside, prepared our evening shows. Nobody made us sleep. We could spend our nights chatting with friends, laughing, visiting each other. We just should keep silent. We had two volunteers. They are very creative; they gave us a lot of ideas and helped to make them. Thank them for giving unforgettable associations!
We also learnt a lot of foreign songs, they were funny. But the Thai one I liked the most.

Gayan tuk pave,
Gayan tuk pave….
Sia tu sa
Sia tu sa.
Ron din’ din’ don
Ron din’ din’ don

Ksenia Kaverina, school #1

These winter holidays I spent my time with my best friends in the AFS winter camp. In the beginning I want to say that these were the funniest, the most interesting and craziest days in my life!!!

We arrived there in the morning. Volunteers met us very friendly and we were allowed to stay together in a room with whom we want. Of course I lived with my friends. But we didn’t spend so much time in our room. All the time we had something to do. There were a lot of foreigners from many different countries like Germany, Italy, America, Guatemala and Thailand. It was really interesting to get in contact with new people, especially foreigners….We were separated into 4 groups. At first I didn’t like it (because not all my friends were with me…) just a girl from my school and Alessandro (my best friend’s host brother; he is from Italy)…For every day we had a special program. We got up at 9 o’clock with the help of Elena Ivanovna (hahahhaha….I will never forget how she shouted at us!!) because there wasn’t enough time to sleep. All night we had fun with our volunteers and new friends. We went from room to room searching adventures and games.
We had breakfast at 9.30. It was always very difficult to get up =) The food was bad…..but what else could we expect from the camp?

After breakfast every day we had lessons of foreign languages. I learned Spanish, Thai, German, and Italian…And after the lessons we should think about two presentations. The country whose language you learnt and another we could choose. Most of all I liked to learn foreign dances! It’s so funny!

Preparing presentations together with all group helped us to get into more closer contact and to be united. We became really like a big family. We slept together, helped each other, shared our impressions…Our 2 volunteers were for me like mother and father)

In the evening we showed our presentations. It was always very funny to watch them, especially how foreigners learned Russian songs. I remember the presentation where David (a boy from America) danced strip-dance =) Yeee, we had really nice and crazy time. But the craziest part was later. We had a party every day! I liked it so much. We danced until 12 o’clock and we had forces to continue our fun all night.

On the 7th of January we had a wonderful day! We shouldn’t sleep all night and we had some kind of Christmas predictions about our future. Then what I really liked: We had games at the fresh air. In the afternoon we were taught tango, waltz, etc.
And in the evening we had a really cool Christmas party! Every person was wearing a costume… Girls were in dresses. It was very official and beautiful.

After this day we were sleeping so sweet, that we couldn’t get up and go to breakfast. Elena Ivanovna was so nice, that she brought us food into our rooms =) She really saved us. We were so hungry!
At the end of the camp we had a king and a queen whom we choose from every group. They should dance together and pay each other compliments. I enjoyed this competition; it helped to become good friends with your partner and of course to have fun!

At the end I think in these 8 days in winter camp I changed myself, I found a lot of new friends and had a good time with all people!
I think that this camp will be very interesting for everyone.

Photo E. Kulikova