7 hour camps and blisters

Normally people begin blogging at the start of a new chapter in their life, for example: Becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer, since that is not really my style, I am starting my blog now: When I have a decent Internet connection. Also for those 5 people (you know who you are) I have finally caved to the peer pressure, I am a blogger. With that being said, endless stories have occurred and sadly many have missed the humor as now they are old, but lucky for us, Kazakhstan seems to have an endless supply of new experiences, both funny and scary.

With that being said, my friend Merril and I have just finished the shortest ecology camp in history, a whomping 7 hours. We arrived around 6pm and left around 1:30am. Reasoning: six 16 year-olds, 1 hotel, 1 banya, no supervision, and several bottles of vodka, do not an ecology camp make. At least not one we could support. Many times since my arrival I have felt helpless, in a situation where there was nothing I could do. This was probably one of the worst. Attempting to control 6 drunk teenagers through a translator is no small task in addition to the fact that we had no way to contact anyone as the hotel had no telephone and everyone insisted this was "eta normalna." I lost track of how many times we were assured that this is a completely normal situation and no one would care. 2 days later it turns out to be true. The kids were allowed to stay, someone's parents believed a "bad watermelon" story (someone had to explain the puke in the hallway), and the director of the camp, relinquished responsibility to the parents only to have the parents leave them at the hotel. I believe the mentality for this plan of action is "kids will be kids." Craziness.

The first session of camp was pretty fun. We went camping with 14 kinds ages 11-15 in Karinsky Canyon. We went hiking, mushroom picking, visited a honey farm (or honeymoon depending on the translator,) lived through 3 days of continual rain in leaky tents, taught English (sorta) and ate 3 meals of disgusting soup a day. The kids were cool, despite my apparent ability to forget everyone's names (in my defense, those Kazakh names are hard to say) and we ended up having a good time and after our second experience with drunk camp, I'd say the first one was a real success.

Life just isn't fair: So, I am from Colorado, therefore, I take pride in my outdoor prowess, well kind of. Anyway, it turns out that all outdoor skills I may have gained in my lifetime of being an active Coloradan were lost somewhere over the Atlantic. I pretty much fell over every rock and tree root on the trail, and over a 10 day period this adds up to a lot. In addition to the fact that the guys "guiding" our group were wearing 50 tenge banya sandals from the bazaar while I was worried as I left my 300 dollar hiking boots in Ust and had to suffice with my 100 dollar day hikers. Seriously though, there is no justice. I ended up with 3 blisters, and the guides and kids: not one. Figures.