22.7.10
The second group left yesterday evening. As with the first group, I escorted them to the bus, shook their hands after they had taken their seats, and got off to see them drive away. It was tough walking back to my room alone. Many of my students had expressed their thanks for the work that I had done. Funny, what had I really done except scream for attention at the daily presentations. Anyway, students' appreciation is one of the best things about the job. I helped someone learn something. My work wasn't for nothing.
Usually, especially since arriving here, it seems that my efforts are indeed worthless. At least as far as learning is concerned, I don't think my students here learn much English. To be fair, how much can one actually learn in two weeks? On the other hand, if I could inspire them to try harder, I'm sure they could learn a lot more than they do.
Insipration is where it's at. A good teacher can inspire students. This is where I've failed to be good. Regardless of what I do, some students just don't care. And so I've begun to lower my standards for younger students. It's unfortunate, since I don't like teaching, or doing anything for that matter, at low standards. But when your success depends on a group of other people, some of whom couldn't care less about your goals for them, you can't hope to achieve too much. I console myself with the thought that a good teacher also never gives up. In this way, I have been good. I may have lowered my standards, which in a way is giving up something, but I haven't given up on them completely, however lazy they may seem to me, and I won't give up for another two weeks. Some of them actually want to learn English. I'll focus on those students in the last group, until my job finally comes to an end.
I started missing home only since leaving Rostov. I think it's the quality of food that calls me back. I ate well in Rostov. I made big salads, and a small variety of dishes. I call them meat-gulash, bean-gulash, and lastly, pea soup. Most dishes featured significant amounts of garlic and onion, but when I had guests, I toned it down a bit, and I received good reviews.
In Napa, my Dad barbeques all sorts of meat regularly: salmon fillets; chicken; pork chops. He also smokes a mean turkey. More important than meat is, of course, most other food. The basil is blooming and pesto sauce awaits me. Mom says the blackberries have been destroyed since the olianders were pruned, but she just doesn't know where to look. She's afraid of the poison oak up the creek, and meanwhile the biggest blackberries you've ever seen are probably already falling off their thorny branches.

This morning I hiked back to the place I went to two weeks ago on the day before the second group's arrival. It wasn't a long hike, not more than three miles round trip, but it wasn't without obstacles.
They had recently blocked the river from flowing into the sea by covering what had been a thin stream with gravel and rock. Yesterday there was a small storm, and this morning, as I set off, I noticed the sea had turned brown again, like it had several weeks ago during the first group's stay. That could only come from a river pouring tons of dirt into the sea. I walked to the river to find the gravel bridge completely washed away, replaced by a twenty foot gap between the banks of a renewed river of dirt, happily flowing into the Black Sea.
I watched an old man forge his way across, then, convinced that his route was safe, went to a cloth-changing stand, many of which are scattered about the beach, put on my swim trunks, went back to the river and crossed as the old man had done. The water was very dirty, so I couldn't see where I was stepping. For all I knew there may have been holes along the way, along with eels, leaches, and quicksand, but the current wasn't too strong, so I took my time and made it across without getting my backpack wet.
I went to the market, bought some dark chocolate, apples, and water, and had breakfast at the base of a small hill from where I could see the entire beach of Krinitza Bay. Despite the huge brown stain in the sea, the view was pretty good.
I climbed a metal staircase up the hill, crossed the small village at the top, entered a small forest, walked along a communal driveway, turned off onto a well-tred path to the edge of a cliff where there was a bench and a spectacular view. I had some more breakfast. I had also brought an assortment of nuts (almonds, chashews, walnuts and chestnuts) with me. Along with chocolate and some sort of fruit, there's no better hiker's food.
The brown stain hadn't made it so far East. It was only just visible to my right. Before me, about one hundred meters below, the Black Sea's waves splashed monotonously onto a thin gravel beach. I couldn't see the beach from where I was, since the cliff wasn't straight down, but I saw it later from another view. The water was very clear. There didn't seem to be many deep spots close to the beach. Several hundred meters offshore I could still make out the seafloor.
I took to reading a book called "The Turkish Gambit" It's a who-done-it by a Russian author named Akunin. At first his novel was difficult to understand, and although I still don't understand everything, it's gotten much easier.
I read slowly, but I don't care. I get distracted easily. There was a speed boat that repeatedly drove passengers out to sea. The passengers were tugged on a smaller boat. The driver went out beyond the brown stain, which was slowly making its way East, then managed to turn in such a way so to flip his tug, and the passengers were thrown into the sea.
There were seagulls. Viewed from the bottom they looked just like the ones that lived at Redwood Middle School in Napa (they commuted there in large flocks from San Pablo Bay, a northern fractile of San Francisco Bay, to eat up all the trash students left lying around). But viewed from the top, they looked more exotic. The pattern on the top of their wings was more intricate, with black and white spliced together, not the dull grey-tipped white wings of their Californian brothers.
There was a person snorkling in the shallow water below. Once he came up and yelled to shore. I think he was asking if he could grab something with his hands. Maybe a crab. I didn't hear the answer.
I read a chapter and took off. I didn't go to the hidden beach like last time, but headed back to camp. I rested for awhile on a bench where I had eaten my first breakfast that morning, crossed the river again, this time in a different place which turned out to be slightly deeper than the first. I had to hold my backpack above me so to keep it from getting wet, but I kept my balance and made it across. I returned to my room, showered, and took to writing.

Often when we have taken our students to the beach, we learn that they, for whatever reason, are not allowed to enter the water. A number of bullshit restrictions are enforced regularly, more so in the past two weeks, I think since the government performed an official safety review after several people drowned at a camp on the Azovski Sea.
On account of this review there were a number of precautions undertaken, among others the closure of the river by means of a gravel bridge. All it took was one or two small storms before that was completely washed away. Brilliant engineering! Now the government has left the area. I think the river will stay as it is until someone else drowns in the region.
On one occasion, they weren't allowed to swim because the water was too cold. Of course, I can swim whereever I like when I have time, but I don't enjoy taking advantage of this previledge in the presence of my students. It's tough to see the looks on their faces as you walk onto the beach, fully refreshed and ready to lie on the warm rocks to dry off. Nevertheless, I went swimming on that morning, only to find the water infested with grey jellyfish.
Some students had noticed them from the shore and taken some from the water to show their friends, but I didn't think there would be so many in the water. They were everywhere! Many of them were dead, but some of them were still twiching, looking for a last meal before washing up onto the beach.
There were enough people in the water that I concluded swimming was safe. I didn't stay in the water for long, though. I didn't like feeling them against my skin. I might as well have been swimming in runny snot. And who knows, was it that they couldn't sting you, or that they were just waiting for the right moment? Admitedly, with my googles it was a sight to see all those jellyfish swimming about. The biggest ones were about the size of my hand (I have big hands), the smaller ones could have fit in my palm.
On another occasion, the students couldn't swim because the waves were too big. Again, I didn't restrain myself on their regard, but left the grounds and swam on my own a bit down the beach. I did some body surfing. I don't know if I was doing it correctly, I just swam with the large waves and let myself be thrown towards the shore. I scraped my arm a bit, but had fun. It would have been more fun if I could've taken some students with me. It was a huge bummer for my students to see people not affiliated with the camp, people young and old, having a ball in the water while they had to watch from the beach. At one point there was a crowd of young people, about twelve years old on average, which drifted into our usual swimming area. They squealed with pleasure as the waves tossed them about like ants in a rainstorm.
Even if they are allowed to swim, officially they have to stay within a strict boundary which extends not five meters from the beach. On a few rare occasions, I've been allowed to take some older students to swim freely with me off the grounds, but we probably won't see much of that when the third group comes, because once they taste that freedom, they don't want to go without it. The company doesn't seem to trust me as a lifeguard, and perhaps rightly so. After all, I'm not qualified as such in any way. I only have a vague idea of how to perform CPR. On the other hand, are the Russian lifeguards qualified? Do they even have such qualifications in this country? I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. If so, then aside from the experience standing on the beach, protecting children swimming in water shallow enough to stand in, these lifegaurds don't have anything over me. Furthermore, the mathematician in me can't help but consider the statistics. How many young people, not attending the camp, swim freely on our beach every day? Hundreds! And when is the last time someone drowned? Conclusion: it's pretty safe to swim. That's even true after the next bozo drowns (knock on wood - I still have two weeks left here).
I have enjoyed swimming far beyond the camp's boundary. There's another boundary about one hundrer meters out. At that point the water is around twenty feet deep. On days when the water is clear, you can see the bottom. There's a point where the rocky bottom gives way to fine sand. If the Black Sea were several meters more shallow, then it would have a beach like at Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, where the sand is so fine that it feels like you're walking on petrified dust. I dive down to the underwater beach and grab some sand every once in awhile. I try to imagine it dry, and it reminds me of home.