Tomorrow Club's Camp

From July 13-18 we traveled to a village called Novokonstantinovka on the Azov Sea for a kids camp with Tomorrow Clubs. We were fortunate enough to be able to travel with our friend Oleg who has a car however we were unfortunate enough to be able to travel by car and therefore fully experience the finest "highways" in the Zaporozhye O'blast (province).  Potholes - nay - craters you could lose your car in coupled with the craziest passing attempts you can imagine equaled a very interesting trip. Don't ever worry about us though - I pray the entire time we travel anywhere so we're covered!!

The place where the camp was held is a beach resort owned and operated by a Christian person so there were other children's camps as well as just regular vacationers at the same resort. Now I am using the word "resort" and for Ukraine it was quite lovely - very clean and well taken care of, many playgrounds and areas to relax and an expansive beachfront that was fenced off for resort use only. 

We had a "half-luxury" room for our family (the luxurious part being A/C): 

 The door to our room: 

 Our room seemed to be the only one of it's kind - right next door was a big hall where chapel was held, and on the other side there was a stairwell leading to many apartment-style rooms. There were also cabins where vacationing families were staying and there were several big buildings with dorm-style rooms where the camp kids stayed. Outside our room, and many other rooms where these great covered seating areas with a table where we played games in the shade or avoided rain showers. Bathrooms were outhouses BUT there was a choice on whether you wanted to sit or stand and the toilets were real, new toilets not just a bench with a hole:) 

There were 96 kids and every morning and evening there was a chapel for a little over an hour. 

 The theme of the week was "Indians" and we Canadians had a few laughs at how politically incorrect it was and at how much trouble someone would be in, in Canada if they tried to pull off the same thing! It was great though and the kids were really into it - many wore costumes and they all picked names. I think this is Strong Rope and Shoots With A Gun. 

 I had been told by many people that the sea was wonderful and warm, and it was both. Every morning for about 3 hours there was beach time - to swim and to play games altogether as a camp. The water was great - like being in a bath tub - at it's deepest the sea is only 37 meters.

 Beach games: 

 The cafeteria where we ate:

 Every day we had a thunderstorm go by - there was one day where we had rain for maybe 10 minutes. 

 Playing ping pong during free time: 

 Every day from 6-7 there was a camp game. One day they decided that Steve and Justin should be covered in oil, go and hide, and then the kids would find them and have to drag them back to a home base. However, it was determined that oil is very difficult to get out of clothing so instead, someone made the executive decision to cover them in HONEY!!

 The kids weren't deterred at all! 

 The result was obviously a huge mess, although pretty hilarious:

 Now although this food looks appealing, don't be fooled by it's lovely, flower-plated appearance! 

 The. food. was. awful!! Every meal was a different kind of kasha (porridge), a "meat", soup and a vegetable side. I will say that I enjoyed every soup! But we went to the market every day and survived on fruit and buns with Nutella!

Tuesday morning August woke up with an excessively swollen forehead. 

Our immediate thought was that maybe he was having an allergic reaction to something (the day before he had eaten a bite of Nutella with nuts obviously, and we also thought that maybe he was stung by something but I was sure that it was in the neck). We took him to see the camp nurse who gave him some pills (one I think was a charcoal pill and how on earth do you give a baby a pill??!!) and she took his temperature and wasn't sure what to tell us. 

 Later the nurse came to find us to say that she had called a doctor who said that it might have something to do with his kidneys so don't give him juice or ice cream. Of course she came up to us as we were feeding him ice cream and giving him juice! We weren't too concerned about it, we just made sure that people were praying for him and he seemed to feel fine so I took that as a good sign. 

Another afternoon camp game with different stations to collect "euros" - the limbo: 

 and arm wrestling:

A few evenings they showed a movie out in the field:

The guys "taught" baseball in the afternoons and although the kids may have had fun, they definitely learned nothing, but not for lack of trying on Steve and Justin's part!

On our last evening there was a bonfire for the kids down on the beach.

It was a wonderful week and we're really hoping to connect with some of the kids we met, especially getting the older ones to attend some Young Life events. Kids are also awesome to practice Russian with - they're really forgiving when we make mistakes and they're really patient to get us to understand them! After our last time at the beach this morning the kids all boarded buses and headed back to their homes (mostly around Zap) and we ourselves headed home. 

*Update:*
August's forehead is better - we got home and I started Googling :) and I believe it was a sinus cold - his sinuses were just clogged up which caused them to swell.