The First Week

Whew! It has been quite the week, as was expected. I haven’t had any Internet during this week of the Latvian trip. The camp doesn’t have any. It hasn’t really been that bad, just a little annoying, but also kind of nice in a way. Obviously, I can’t give the week in detail, as that would take far too long...well, my week is written in detail on my journal, but it would still take a while to write it all, so I’ll only give the highlights. It is rather long, just be forewarned.

And for anyone who may not know, I am helping out at a Christian based camp in Latvia for about six weeks.

June 24th, and 25th- The rest of the flight went well, nothing too exciting went on. The flight from Portland to Amsterdam went well. At the Amsterdam airport we had to pick up our luggage and check it in again. On the airplane I sat by interesting people. One was a teenager boy who had nothing with him but an umbrella. He did not say a single word throughout the flight, or made a noise, or even moved his facial muscles in such a way as to resemble emotions. Then my other neighbor was a British man who would occasionally mumble under his breath.

I got to the camp and basically fell asleep a few minutes after that. Technically, it had been two days when I got to the camp, but it only felt like one really, really long day.

June 26th-In the morning there was church to go to, but not until 11:30 in the morning. It took about forty minutes to drive to the church, so we had to leave at about 10:40. After church there was a little picnic thingy.

That night there was sauna, which I was really happy about. I typically don’t get into the whole spa thing, but the sauna is absolutely lovely. The really fun thing to do is let your body get really warm, and then jump into the lake.

June, 27th-In the morning the girls and I made signs of our names for our beds. Mine was okay, I wish I was more creative with things like that though. I’m still not satisfied. Here are some pics.

We mostly did it because the boys kept bragging about how much better the cabin they were sleeping in was better. In all honesty theirs is better. It is more of a mini house, with a fridge and a washing machine, and stuff. Us girls get to sleep in one of the camp cabins, which is pretty much bunk beds.

Also, that morning during worship we had to worship with art. We could draw or make sculptors with some colored clay, or make a poster like thing. At least those were the things that were mentioned. I didn’t do any of those things. Instead I wrote a poem. I actually do not have it with me at the moment. I will try to get it up later.

June 28th-The morning of the 28th there was a "team building activity." All the workers were divided into two teams, and then each team was tied all together with a rope. Then we had to race. My team lost, just to let you know from the start. So all tied together we had to tramp through the forest. Ha, ha. I'm not sure which was more fun, getting covered in mud while crossing the creak, or accidentally getting into some stinging nettles.

The next activity was tug of war over a stream. Let's just say that I pretty much got pulled into the river and got soaked.

Then the "lecture" we had was interesting. We were divided up into teams again, four this time. Each team was given a passage of scripture, and from it we had to find the Gospel, and explain it. Three people from each team needed to explain in front of everyone. One person for seven year old, one for ten year old, and one for seventeen year old. In my team I got the seventeen year old. I did okay.

Our other lecture we divided into the same teams, and filled out a schedule. Though the order you put things really didn't matter, it was more about the ideas you came up with.

Then for dinner we had something interesting. When we sat down, there was half a pastry at each spot, and there was a bowl of milky liquid with white chunks in the middle. Turns out the milky stuff was macaroni in hot milk. It was interesting, and with some sugar tasted...good, I guess. I'm still not sure if I like it or not.

June 29th-This day was work day. I spent most of the morning painting wooden benches, then I helped to clean out the lake. That was actually really fun. We went out in boats to collect the weed. After the work was done it was pretty much free time, which we had quite a bit of.

Also something interesting to note. That morning it was pizza for breakfast, (or if you're Latvian, pica,) and pancakes for dinner. Is it just me, or is dinner and breakfast switched up?

That night there was a bonfire. One of the interns had brought marshmallows with him, so we roasted marshmallows. We had to find sticks for it though, like actually, sticky sticks. It took forever because we were having problems. Then one of the other workers came up and told us the tree we were taking the stick from was protected in Latvia so we couldn't take from it. It was obvious he was joking, but he kept it up for several minutes anyway.

I eventually got a stick, and roasted a marshmallow

June 30th-Safety training this day. There is a zip line, a climbing wall, and a ropes course. The ropes course takes the most training. Everything else took only a few seconds, but the ropes course took several moments to explain.

I didn't actually go up. I went up last year when I came to this camp. Didn't go up this time though.

July 1st-Today! Today it was a pretty easy morning, nothing but a worship session, which we actually have a couple times a day at the camp. Starting after lunch though we began to tear up the old stump path to replace it with a stone one. Here are some pics of that,

Now I am actually at the house of one of the Latvian missionaries where I am taking advantage of the Internet here and spending way too much time on the computer. Before this we went to a really cool restaurant. Here are some pics of that.

My dinner

That will be all for now. I may or may not post next week.