Inter­na­tion­al Camp in Losevo

Dates: July 15 — July 31, 2015
Main leader: Lubov Shimina

Well, anoth­er sum­mer camp of «For­mula of Unity» is over. It took place in the recre­ation­al cen­ter «Parus» (which means «Sail») in Len­in­grad region from 18th to 31st of July, 2015. It was not the first mul­tidiscip­lin­ary inter­na­tion­al sum­mer camp but it was organ­ized perfectly!

104 stu­dents from dif­fer­ent coun­tries and cit­ies of the world par­ti­cip­ated in this ses­sion, all of them left with pos­it­ive feel­ings, and here you can see some par­ti­cipants’ opinions:

The camp was very inter­est­ing and excit­ing because com­mu­nic­at­ing with people from dif­fer­ent coun­tries is not only use­ful for prac­ti­cing Eng­lish skills but also inter­est­ing as a way of learn­ing new points of view on life, of find­ing out «how anoth­er coun­try breathes».

After the camp I have real­ized how much I got used to all this and miss it, so I’m look­ing for­ward to the next year to vis­it again the won­der­ful coun­try of hap­pi­ness «FDI».

I was for the first time in «For­mulo» this year and it was the best camp in my life. It was so cool to talk to every­one there, and it was fun and excit­ing to organ­ize activ­it­ies and just to be with my won­der­ful group.

The par­ti­cipants lived each day with fun and excite­ment. As it is typ­ic­al for such sum­mer camps, they had classes in the first part of the day and after lunch there were diverse cre­at­ive events and activ­it­ies: dances with funny games, an inter­est­ing quiz about cus­toms and tra­di­tions of dif­fer­ent coun­tries (and of much more ones than were present in the camp), nar­rat­ive role plays such as «Lib­rar­i­an», «Stily­agi» or «Rus­si­an Teddy Boys», etc. where the play­ers were like real act­ors who lived the lives of their char­ac­ters, so these games burst with action. Doing a lot of cre­at­ive tasks the chil­dren had to make some­thing up or per­form on stage, and they did their best! Their team work was always ori­gin­al and at its top.

Of course, each one of these inter­est­ing and won­der­ful activ­it­ies was mem­or­able, how­ever, the chil­dren poin­ted out some of them:

The event where we had to show dif­fer­ent coun­tries was a great oppor­tun­ity to learn about the tra­di­tions of the coun­tries which were not present in the camp! All guys were very creative.

The role play «Stiliagi» was spe­cial because every­one was so involved in their roles that they almost for­got the dif­fer­ence between the ima­gin­at­ive world and the real one!!

Many par­ti­cipants also emphas­ized that their group time and «even­ing lights or candles» (even­ing group meet­ings) were very import­ant and fas­cin­at­ing for them because there they were able to talk to oth­er chil­dren and share their impres­sions freely and without any doubt.

As for the first part of the days, after the sum­mer school, there were a lot of use­ful teach­ing mater­i­als, as well as good memor­ies about the time spent in classes, and the evid­ence of that were the smiles on the faces dur­ing the award­ing with cer­ti­fic­ates, as well as the eyes burn­ing with the light of the acquired knowledge!

Moreover, there was also an excur­sion day (and more than one), in which the guys went on an excur­sion along the rivers and canals of St. Peters­burg, and after that every­one had time to walk around the main sights in the city cen­ter, and also to have a deli­cious din­ner. Thanks to our excur­sion, all souven­ir shops of the embank­ment of the Gri­boedov chan­nel had an excel­lent income that day, and that’s why every­one was def­in­itely very happy!

14 days of the school passed by quickly like one moment. The farewell time was sad and, des­pite the fact that we had always known that it would come, too sud­den. The good-bye party for all par­ti­cipants espe­cially touched every­one’s soul: after all, we did not want to part with so good and under­stand­ing people and friends! And farewell candles las­ted till night, till the depar­ture of the for­eign stu­dents on their first bus :)

International Camp in Losevo

Unfor­tu­nately, all issues were in Rus­si­an, but some art­icles there had been writ­ten in English: