Baltic States Teaching Tolerance Through English Camp: Day 2 (1)

Day 2 began with a fun activity in the morning session. After everyone had a delicious breakfast, we wrote our wishes, aims and questions regarding this day on small cut-out leaf-form pieces of paper and attached them to our camp tree. Thus, our tree is slowly growing and getting more and more beautiful.

The theme of the day was "Our World: countries, languages, traditions." The campers compiled quizes on their own country for their friends from other countries. By taking part in three quizes, the campers learnt important and intereting facts about each other's homeland: flags, national symbols, most popular sports, longest rivers and highest mounts, typical dishes and favourite festivals. The campers had a good opportunity not only to learn about the Baltic States, but also to experience how good it feels to let others know what makes them proud of their own country.

Afterwards, we had a lot of fun in the lake. The campers were swimming under the tutor Miks' and the volunteers Ignas and Thomas' supervision. Ilya and Janeks had a diving splash competition, while the Latvian girls were giving marks to their splashes. We spent about an hour in the water, and the children have grown fond of their tutors and will most probably want to have fun with them later too.

Now the afternoon session is coming to an end, and our USG alumnus guest Vytis Silius is finishing his presentation on the countries and languages of the world. The children studied the language map and could see what variety of languages people speak in different countries. They learnt what languages are similar and what languages are very different, what makes a language live and why languages die. Most importantly, they learnt that however different the languages are, people can communicate by using one language -- the language of their hearts.