Today we started the day by decorating the camp with sidewalk chalk, balloons. and streamers. The goal is to make camp as inviting and fun as possible from the moment the kids walk through the gate. 
The kids came/are still coming throughout the day. The first one camp before breakfast. The children from Kerch or neighboring villages came at random times throughout the day, and the groups from orphanages (family style or others). Came in larger groups. Two groups come tonight at midnight. So a few of us are staying up to meet them.
Following breakfast we did various activities for the kids to do as the rest of the children were coming. Bubbles, sidewalk
chalk, jump rope, basketball, football (a.k.a. soccer), and molding balloons. Of course the last one comes as a package deal with the clown outfit.
This little boy, Oleg (Pictured to the right), came to me and asked me to make a dog. So I did. He asked for another,
considering all the kids were asking for more this didn't really phase me. Until he shyly asked for a third. I asked why. Thinking that he was just getting greedy. When his response was. I have two sisters. I was so impressed! As others are begging for themselves. He was simply asking for the others that he loved.
We did some team building stations in the afternoon. Most of the games went over very well, however one was a flop. Good thing I have great team members who think on their feet and changed it to duck, duck, goose instead. Apparently it was much more successful.
After supper we did our first craft. Simple name tags. We talked about the craft rules, and I addressed the issue of stealing as lightly as possible. The manner drew a few laughs, which for day one is usually a good thing. And yet again the kids surprised me. After craft as we where cleaning up. A camper from the middle group, brought back into the room a camper from the youngest group. The older girl helped the younger to empty her hand which was full of "stolen" (I asked them not to take the extras so that we could use them for a later craft) stickers. After returning them they quietly turned and walked away. I was floor by how the kids are helping each other make good choices so early on in the camp.
The evening was filled with practice for tomorrow's opening ceremony, and bedtime stories (where we mostly focused on introductions). After all this you might think our night is done and it is now time to sleep. Which in this long day would make sense, however we followed it up with a little group worship and then we stayed up till midnight to welcome the 20 new kids in. Only midnight turned into almost 1 am. So now it is time for us to sleep.
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