Speak Out Hungary (Part 3)

Each day at Speak Out we had a different activity for the campers.  Just some fun activities to help develop relationships and also to encourage a little healthy competition.  For most of these activities, they split into groups to compete against each other.  Saturday, the first night of each week was the welcome night.  This was when the campers had their grand welcome and like most things at Speak Out there was tons of energy!  This was the night that the campers were introduced to the staff, they met their tutors and tutor groups, and they learned the rules and expectations of the camp.  Here is a video of the welcoming night... the staff lined the walls of the cafeteria and played loud music, clapped, and cheered as the students came inside!

Sunday night was American Culture Night!  The campers always seemed to love this night!  There were six stations:  Music, Reality Show, Food, Lifestyles, and Holidays.  Each group came up with 20min worth of fun and games related to American culture in these five areas and then the campers rotated through each group.  I was part of the Lifestyles group and we had a lot of fun!  Each person in our group had a different job.  Caleb did movie trivia having the campers guess the movie by using popular soundtracks like Indiana Jones, Jaws, and Superman.  After movie trivia, Shelley taught them how to surf like a Californian.  Then, Mark raced them to see how fast they could shuck corn.  Once they finished that, Savannah had them milking cows using rubber glove utters.  Finally the last thing was Anna and I taught them a couple Swing Dance moves... mostly Anna, but I explained the history of Swing and Jazz and she taught me the moves so we could teach the campers.  It was tons of fun!  Here are a few pictures:

Caleb playing the movie trivia music.  They earned points for how many they answered correct.  

Shelley teaching them how to surf, they are paddling out.  They got points for participation, everyone had to do it.  

Mark explaining the corn shucking race rules.

Savannah running the rubber glove cow milking...  the gloves actually worked quite well!  They got points if they could do it gently.  If they got too rough, Mark or Savannah would Moo!  

Anna and I teaching the swing dancing.  We taught them the basic step and two moves.  We then asked  for 5 pairs to do a move and gave them points if they could do it.  

Monday night was the Staff Hunt!  Basically all the staff dressed up and went out all over the town.  The students were assigned groups and they had to go find us and get our signatures.  The team with the most signatures won.  It was a lot of fun and the people in the town always laughed and gave us a lot of weird looks! 

Zombies!!!

Me and Brad

Their costume was awesome!  Usually he is painting her!

Caleb, Alice, Cody, and I on the walking street.  Caleb, Cody, and I usually dressed and went out to eat before the staff hunt and got a lot of weird looks... a cowboy, a baker, and where's Waldo... something about that just doesn't seem right...

Turo Rudi!!! It's a really good Hungarian chocolate cheesecake bar thingy!

Alice singing, she was really good and some people actually left her some money in her bucket!

Tuesday night we had off, but earlier in the day we had sports day where the campers and staff competed in soccer, basketball, football, volleyball, and ultimate frisbee.

Wednesday night was the Hungarian outreach.  Americans don't participate in this directly.  This is the night that the Gospel is shared with the students in their own language and there is an invitation and time for them to talk to Hungarian staff about questions they may have about Christ or spiritual things.  The Americans meet and have praise and worship and prayer for the outreach during this time.  

Finally, Thursday night is the closing night of the camp.  We throw a huge wild west party with all sorts of fun and games! 

Students won tickets as they played the different games.  Once they earned 15 tickets they could pie any staff they wanted in the face.  This is Caleb running the pie table.  

Caleb suggested Brad should pie his two new staff team members.... little did Brad know Katie and I wouldn't go down without a fight!

We then ended each camper week with a hoedown!