Adventures of Helicopter and the Chocolate Man

It's unavoidable. I have to blog today.

The school was closed last week because it is a national holiday week for all students. I spend the week teaching english to kids at a camp. We'll get more into that later. The school is closed down for yet another week now because some half of the student came down with flu like symptoms during vacation last week. How come there were no epidemics while I was in high school, we could have run train on swine flu and gotten half the year off. Kids these days have no concept of exploitation in the name of slacking. Its sad really. So I am literally the only person taking classes in an entire school building right now and most of my teachers don't even want to come in for class. I had one class this morning and my second one was just canceled. I have no moral choice but to blog. I owe you.

Camp was surprisingly fun. I really don’t like kids that much, especially in large groups. The more kids are around the less likely they are to listen or care about anything. I taught four english lessons each day as well are organizing the kids for meal, sports, swimming and other child like activities. Here are some highlights of the Camp:

Nicknames:
Every one in the camp chose a nickname to go by for the duration of camp. I for example was Master Bus. (I was thinking about Debater, but that would be too easy). A lot of the boys, trying to be cool, chose lame, poser nicknames like "Rapman" and "Fifty Cent" (who was quite overweight and quickly became known as Fat Joe). One young albino boy with a mullet though rose above the immaturity and picked a nickname that rings in the heart of every six-year-old boy in America. HELICOPTER. It’s just so simple and elegant. what kindergartener wouldn't gladly trade his name in for the exquisite beauty of Helicopter. If only he had known the word Fire Engine, life would have been complete for him.

Quiditch:
The athletic competition between the student at the camp is Quiditch. Its essentially glorified handball. Glorified in that it has bludgers (other soccer balls) and if you have the quaffle and get hit with one you need to toss the quaffle up like a jump ball. The high point of quiditch for the campers is the last day an all star team is chosen and the are given the opportunity to play a match against the counselors. I know what your first thought there was: "Oh my god, who would let craig play in that game, he might actually kill a child." And then your second thought: "no no Craig would show some restraint and athletically dominate the children to the point of tears but not actually do any physical harm, hes better than that." Lets just say you should trust your first instincts. It was a blood bath. Fat Joe was a surprisingly good goalie, but he was no match for the bump, set, spike strategy. A few goals were scored on direct rebounds off of his face, tough kid though.

Politically Incorrect:
One of the other counselors taught the other sets of english lessons each day. His nickname was Master Moto and he’s from Zambia. I was drinking tea one day in the hallway of the dormitories and keeping an eye on the kiddies when one of the older student who spoke good english came up to me and said, and I quote, "have you seen the chocolate man, I need to ask him something." I literally spit tea all over everything in a 5 yard radius. His response? "Are you ok? Good. I need to talk to the chocolate man." Point completely missed. I talked to the russian counselors about this and they say it was ok since black people in russia refers to georgians and chechens, there needed to be a differentiation, and apparently chocolate is it. Bottles my mind.

Shashlik:
One night when all of the kiddies were asleep we went down to the beach (Finnish Gulf) to grill some shashlik and celebrate the "Day of National Unification" (a holiday more fake than Columbus Day and Kwanza Combined). I told the other counselors that I would take care of making the fire since "every American knows how to build a fire." I occasionally take to talking shit on behalf of Americans. More out of humor than pride but the impact is the same. (they also told me that they had charcoal and gasoline.) The charcoal was not auto-light like in America, we forgot the gasoline, and it snowed that day so all of the wood was wet. I had talked a big game and now I was in a pickle. I pulled off my jacket, rolled up the sleeves of my hoodie, instantly got cold, and put my jacket back on. This was going no where, and fast. The two guys Moto and Kroniker went back to the dorm to get the gasoline while Oss (female) and I stayed to work on the fire. Using the teepee method, I performed my best Bear Grylls impression and actually had a small fire built and stabilized by the time the guys got back. Not to say the gasoline didn’t help, but I got it done on my own. Dignity of America, consider yourself preserved.

That’s all for now. More Later

Ramble On,
Craig