Camp Blog 2: orphans

There are several orphans here at camp which is of particular interest to Amy as she's felt called to work with orphans and widows in the past. It's really interesting to see how typical and atypical they are of what we think of for orphans.

Sergei: he's the daddy of the bunch. the tough guy. don't mess with me. He worked on establishing right off that (for some reason) I should be scared of him. He acted like he couldn't understand my russian and spoke as quickly as he possibly could to make it hard for me to understand him. super competitive and sports and with a HUGE chip on his shoulder. I had to talk to dad about dealing with him - but he's come around. He lives in the orphanage in Tyumen' and has promised to stay in touch.

Zhenya: whoa. the worst of it all. screetches, runs around, doesn't obey, smokes (seriously addicted) and in general a bad kid. On the third or fourth day, his counselor asked me to 'babysit' for the morning and it literally started off with me running from one end of camp to the other. Then we went 'berry picking' which was really an excuse to try and get cigarettes from people who work at the camp. When that fell through, he was seriously hurting for a nicotine fix and wanted to get kicked out of camp so he could have a cigarette. He was a problem throughout the session to the point of 'threatening' to run away from the bus so that he could stay for the second session.

pasha: crazy - went swimming in 40 degree weather. says he likes it

lena: a really tough girl who beat most of the boys at sports. a loner a bit, and a deep seeded lonliness. didn't have much interaction with her because she's a girl, but if you think of her say something nice to dad.

pasha: gosh, what a cute kid. he's probably 8 or 9 years old and really wants to be a good kid. he's just had a lot of bad examples set before him.