It's Always Precipitating in Sennaya Ploschad

OK, so this inside joke requires a LOT of explanation. First, Sennaya Ploschad is a major Metro stop in the center of the city--it is where we get off to go to the synagogue, teach at EVA (here's a recent picture from my English class), and go out at night. In the summer, it was ALWAYS raining there--even on beautiful days, like Rosh Hashanah this year, there would be a sunshower when we got off the Metro. And now that the snow is coming down basically every day, the rule holds true: it's always prescipitating in Sennaya Ploschad.

Let me get the little things out of the way. First, weird sports alert: on television over the past few weeks, I have seen the men's world championship of ping pong, which featured two North Koreans, so I didn't know who to root against more; women's handball; bocce ball, which I didn't understand at all; more sumo wrestling; and competitive darts. Also, remember that you can see the fully-captioned slideshow of the camp, which will tell you what we did on a day-to-day basis, by clicking here.

Let's start with the first day, where we ran smack into a tremendous cultural barrier. We didn't realize this going in, but Russians aren't big on introductions; they basically assume that if you're in the same place at the same time, it's not necessary to share your name or other biographical details...you'll get to know each other soon enough. So here we are, expecting to shake hands and learn about all these dynamic young counselors at camp, and only ONE person came up to introduce themselves. As you would expect, all of the orientation, staff meetings, and activities were held in Russian, so we were only able to pick up snippets here and there. The feeling we felt on that first day--surrounded by 70-some campers and a dozen counselors--was one of crushing loneliness.

Eventually, the kids and counselors did warm up to us. I played soccer and ping pong with the boys, and Alyson played cards and hung out with the counselors and some of the girls. At night, when the kids were having their discotech, we would relax in our room and read or play cards. By the end, the kids really did enjoy saying "Hello" to us in the hallways. In fact, the last night of camp (when the kids stayed up all night!) our door was knocked on late into the night/early morning as kids invited us to play cards, ping pong, etc. Now, we know that these kids aren't going to be our best friends for life; in fact, if they remember our names or a single English word we taught them come the January Adain Lo Winter camp, I'd be surprised. But that's not important; the part of our mission we really care about is the long-term impact. Have we been able to communicate that the American Jewish community cares about them? Have we been able to instill these kids with a sense of pride and excitement about their Jewishness? And, most of all, do they understand that there are people in this world who are willing to drop everything--successful careers, a caring community, their comfortable lifestyle--because there are Jews in need thousands of miles away?