4 months left!!

I am currently sitting in my room, with the air conditioning blasting because its been over 100 degrees the past 4-5 days!! But its nice to just be relaxing after 3 weeks of summer camps.
I started off with my 2 week Survivor Camp in Western Ukraine, in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains. Again, it was a great 10 days; hiking up and down the mile climb to our camp site, cooking over a fire, and enduring the huge thunderstorms that rolled in every 2 days! I was also able to join the campers when we went to hike Mt. Heverla, the highest mountain in Ukraine, around 2,036 meters. Not that high, but still a good climb up! It was a very surreal experience, because as we reached the top the clouds that had been slowly building collapsed on top of us and we were enveloped in a mist that surrounded the mountain and made you feel as if you were in another planet.
Overall, the weather was great, with one or two huge storms rolling through and flooding our fires and most of the students cheap tents. The classes went great, and we spent most nights around a campfire after playing some great American camp games. Another highlight was firing off REAL fireworks (the big ones are easy to buy and cheap here) and hearing the booms echo off the mountain sides for July 4th! By the end of the camp all of the counselors were dirty, exhausted, but glad that we got the chance to spend 10 wonderful days in the mountains, doing some actual camping. It made me realize how different the landscape around Ukraine can be. It was a great time!
After that I headed to Ivano Frankivsk, which is a city in western Ukraine, and reminds me more of Europe than any other Ukrainian city with its big boulevards and beer tents everywhere. It took me 2 days to get to Lugansk from the west, and I had only one day at home before I headed to Kreminna, a town in northern Lugansk Oblast ,for Camp IKNOW (a ecological-based camp that had been done in other parts of Ukraine but never in The East before). On the 13th we got all the counselors and kids (7 Americans, 16 students, and 2 Ukrainian adults) to the camp. It was set in a beautiful red pine forest, yet was a little dirty because it was near the main city beach, so there were tons of beer bottles everywhere. The point of the camp was to teach students about the importance of the environment, and to learn how to plan and implement environmental-based projects in their communities. So the days were spent having lessons, and then after lunch playing some games and going to either the dirty lake nearby or the great river about 40 minutes walking away. Due to a misunderstanding (by me) we didn’t have a cook to help us at the camp, so we did all our cooking (again) over a far using very, very dirty pots and a grate. The meals took a little longer, but after some awesome chili and Shashlik (Ukrainian kebabs/barbeque) I thought we did a good job. The students also put together a community clean up for the rode to the lake, and after we were done I think they were pretty proud of themselves. I put some pictures up on face book of both these camps, and will put a few on my blog as well.
These camps usually fly by, and with another two camps coming up, my summer will be gone before I know it. I have left then 4 months left, and my anxiety about coming back to America and what to do when I get there is slowly growing… but for the moment I will relax, take in the heat, and enjoy the wonderful Ukrainian summer (with some watermelon of course! Less then 2$ for 12 pounds!)
Talk to you all soon!
With love,
Seth