An Actual Update: Promotions
This has been a very long and intense week. We went to 5 different schools in two cities in Northern Poland to promote English Camps happening in those cities. We would go to each school for most of the school day (8am - 2pm), take over a bunch of English classes to play games in English with the students and tell them about camp. While that may not sound exhausting, trust me, it was.
It was really a hard push for me because of a couple of reasons:
1. I have never really done promotions like this before. While I have spent a lot of time with intern’s and done a lot of things with them, and I’ve even done some promotions, but never this many. It was a weird realization that there were things that interns do that I haven’t done a million times before. I have a feeling I will experience this many more times this summer.
2. No polish! During each class we would make a rule with the students right off the bat: NO POLISH! While they thought this was inconvenient for them, it was actually also really hard for me. I mean, I understood everything they were saying, but it was really important that they don’t speak to me in polish. This mattered because I wanted my teammates to understand everything that was being said, and also I am more so an American this summer than a Pole. So while I normally have a small nationality crisis, this week has been even harder. Though there was a really fun moment each class when would be teaching tongue twisters, and then they would teach us some in polish. Those tongue twisters are hard even for Poles, but when an American tries to say them the kids love it. But eventually they would make me say one, so I would pretend to be really stressed and confused, then BOOM! say it flawlessly (ish). The kids faces were great! They were really impressed, and it was really fun.
3. We also did a lot of traveling. About 19 hours were spent in trains over the past week just to get to the cities we were promoting in. 7 of those hours were on a night train.y team did really well having a good attitude about it all, and we even had a lot of fun, but that is just a lot of time spent on trains. It was exhausting. Worth it, but exhausting. Here is a short video I made of trains and such:
https://vimeo.com/130610731
We got back to our Home Base last night around 10, and we are here until Monday morning when we leave to do more promotions. The they intern team has had a similar schedule, but in different cities. It is really nice to be able to rest and hang out all together for these two days. We are tired, for sure, but we are all also very excited - camps are coming soon! The short term teams land in just over a week, and camps start two weeks from today. The time is almost here, indeed it has come, that students will start to see and feel the love of God through us and all the other camp leaders. These two more weeks of ground work may not be the most exciting, but they are important.
Please pray for us during this next week of promotions, that the students would see in U.S. Something they can’t ignore, that we would have energy, that we love them well, and that we love each other well. Please pray for me as I continue to learn my team, how they work, think and relate, and as I continue to come to God asking that he lead me in this leadership position.
Thanks!//