Chapter 9: Let’s begin the day with some coffee and meet Jackson

As I you might remember, I came to the camp on the 13th of June. Right after my arrival, I met new people, mostly those who I will work/live with for the upcoming almost 3 months. I got familiar with the place thanks to Vitalii, and I received the schedule from Matt until the kids will arrive to the camp.

The schedule was really challenging. We had to come to the kitchen at 7am. Then we had to prepare the salat bar (I will come to that later), prepare the desks, plates and everything for the breakfast.

If I remember well, we had to eat first. As after we have eaten, the others came to the breakfast. After they have finished, we had to clean the place and then go to Matt to ask him if he needs any help. Generally he asked us to help to paint some buildings, or wash chairs, clean the pool, or do other type of manual work. In case there was nothing to do, we could do whatever we wanted. I mostly went and trained basketball. In elementary and in the high school I played a lot. We had a high school team and I played for it. I still wanted to keep myself in a shape, therefore I trained as much as possible. Often alone, sometimes other friends of my join me.

More difficult from sports perspective was swimming. We couldn’t go and swim when we wanted. First there was a test, whether you can swim or not. You had to pass that test, otherwise they did not allow you to swim in the lake. It was weird for me as we were all adults. I though everybody know his/her limits, therefore if someone couldn’t swim, he/she did not go to the lake. Anyway, we all passed the test and later we went to swim very often.

In general we had to come back to the kitchen around 11:15am to start preparing the lunch. The cooks were already working on the food part, the girls were cutting the vegetables for the salat bar, and we set the tables, dishes, ensured that everything is ready until the rest of the crew is not there. Similar to the breakfast we had to eat lunch first. After everybody finished his lunch, we had to clean the whole space again. It was almost the same process as for the breakfast. It was not easy, however we were enough to cover everything on time.

After lunch we had to do the same as after breakfast. We went to continue the work from the morning, or just asking Matt if he needs any further help. If not we were mostly hanging around. In the camp we had several places for sports. We haven’t had the basketball pitch and lake only. There were tennis courts, we had a special building called Noel’s Arc, where we had table tennis, we had gym and actually we had also a computer room with 3-4 computers. In those times we haven’t had smart phone with wifi, however we had a really nice computer room and a room full with interesting books. Therefore everybody could do whatever he/she wanted. We also had a special place just for us (kitchen boys and girls). It was our lunge where we were hanging after dinner.

I almost forgot to mention Jackson. Jackson was our wash machine, which we used to clean dishes. You can see him on the picture below. Looks a bit terrifying, however he helped a lot during the cleaning process.