Csillebérc Summer Camp

This week has been the hardest that Amanda and I have endured since we first arrived in Hungary... and not solely because we have been bereft of internet access.   We were working in a camp in a small outer suburb of Budapest called Csillebérc, which seems to be the place that Budapestian's go when they want to experience nature.  It's also only 20 minutes up the hill from Buda so it's nice and handy for parents to drop their kids off in the morning, go to work then pick them up again in the afternoon.

The camp where we were staying was rather large with a variety of fields, play grounds and wooded areas to explore.  It was really good for the kids as, although Amanda and I were pretty paranoid about losing any of them, it gave us plenty of different areas to take advantage of.   Amanda, Iago and I were sleeping in a small wood and concrete bungalow less than 50 meters from the school that had been hired out for our camp so it was nice and easy to wake up in the morning and have everything open by 7am for the parents to arrive.  We were technically supposed to open at 7:30am but opening earlier gave us time to prepare the classrooms and set up fruit and such for breakfast for the kids if they so wished.  The parents then picked them up at around 4pm but some didn't arrive until 5pm.

There were 20 kids in all, ranging from ages 7  to 14 with English abilities that ranged from barely anything to quite fluent.  Amanda took the eight youngest kids and I took the twelve oldest kids.  Which in retrospect might have been a mistake on my part.  I mean, I've dealt with 7-10 year olds fighting, swearing, refusing to work, sulking, having tantrums, making too much noise etc.  I can handle that now.  I can also handle 18-adult  ages having reasonable objections and dealing with them not doing homework, or inciting mini-rebellions when Amanda and I want them to actually speak English was well as do the grammar.  We've stumbled over that hurdle and now it's behind us.  We can deal with these kinds of issues.

But I've never, and maybe never want to again, had to deal with 10 boys ages 11 to 14 (and four girls around the same age but they weren't the trouble).  These kids weren't childish as our kids at school are, or objectionable as our weekend class students can be, they were simply... "difficult".  They are too young to grab by the collar and teach some manners as they are basically adults now, but as they've only been adults for a year or so at most they are pretty bloody piss poor at the whole maturity thing.  I understand that they are new at being treated like adults but really, all that they wanted to do was play basketball, talk in class, and tease the more vulnerable (and most likely significantly younger) members of the class.  The whole concept of the camp is that is a fun, voluntary event that shouldn't be as strict as school so even our basic mechanics of discipline was difficult.  There could be no sending the kids out of the room, no calling the parents, no beating them with a stick... nothing!  Even today, when one of the kids gave our colleague, Miki, the middle finger because Miki decided to play football instead of basketball all that we really could do is stare him down a little then take them all to the cleaners once the game had started.  (Miki is a 7ft Hungarian water polo player whose philosophy is "If you are nice to me, I'll play nice.  If you are rude, be prepared to lose."  I like his style.)

Anyway, so while I am battling with these kids, Amanda is up the hall playing with her kids.  They are singing songs, playing games, and doing art activities.  She had an issue with one kid pushing another over, so she sent the little boy in question into the corner for a bit.  I was sick with jealously.

The first day went really well for Amanda as she pulled out all the best material that we'd thought up over the last year and her kids left really excited.  The owner of the company that organizes these camps actually received a number of really good emails.  My class was a disaster as I realised that the 14 year olds didn't really want to sing "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" while the 11 year old didn't even know how to ask to go the toilet.  The older in my class wanted to write sentences and do grammar, the younger didn't have any clue what was going on.  If I set an activity for one, the other suffered.  The day just dragged as a result.

As the week progressed it got a little better and I learnt a few lessons here and there, but it was still really tiring and stressful way to spend a week.  Amanda's class had it's own dramas midweek as a number of her kids were getting a little rough with each other, but she sorted them out pretty quickly and they all had a lot of fun.  During the week, we went on a 3 km walk up a hill to lunch every day (which in the 35 degree heat didn't help our temper), we got the kids to write in their diaries, we played with water balloons, did a fair bit of vocab and conversational English and organised a play which the kids performed for their parents on Friday.

The play was actually pretty good (although a lot of my kids decided that they were too cool to get involved). The kids painted a cityscape backdrop and made their costumes.  My kids did a quiz show that had various celebrities like Darth Vader, GLaDOS (which basically meant that the kid was carrying around a potato with a couple of crocodile clips hanging out of it) and cat woman.  Amanda's kids did a play about zombie frogs that jumped from a building in defiance of a policewoman's orders and scared a couple of dragons, a fish and a princess.  It was pretty epic.

Every night after work, Amanda I would hobble the 50 metres to our shack and slowly lower ourselves into bed and groan in pain until we went to sleep.  Even Iago would collapse to the floor as the kids were paying him liberal amounts of attention.  A few of the younger kids decided that his name is "rágo"  (which means "chewing" in Hungarian) and they'd scream that they ran towards him to poke him, hug him and fight over who got to lead him to lunch.  I think that we are all happy to be home but as hard as it was, it was a little sad to see them go at the end of the week.  Amanda actually cried.

- Daniel.