In the second week of July I had the pleasure of working with other volunteers to help out with a festival in Ptuj. It was really nice as the local pentecostal church, Drušvo VEČ, and other volunteers from various communities worked together on making it happen.
Due to restrictions from the Wuhan Virus we were limited to 50 people outside, probably a lot less inside and we prayed that God would give us good weather for that to be possible, otherwise we would have trouble. Praise God, even on Tuesday when rain was forecasted, it only rained before 6AM, so not only was the day beautiful, it was also much more fresh and not so hot. The rest of the week we had lovely bright sunny days, even too sunny at times (sunburns were a thing despite the protection and water re-hydration was mandatory).
These kinds of festivals and camps are experiences, where enough of us have done them for long enough that one just knows what to do without much deliberation and everyone helps with almost everything. We indeed worked with each other as if we had done it many a times as a team before. Each of us, however, did have some specific roles.
I mostly helped with Stephanie on English Classes and with wonderful Anja Deželak on Photography workshop. The former was really mostly just lending a hand, since most kids were quite good with English.
The latter was really fun to do, and different from other times, when I mostly teach photography alone. Anja is a fun person and a good aspiring photographer and it was my pleasure to do it with her. While I presented the technical “good to know” and composition tips (and included a cheat sheet that I had developed for my Fruma Institute), Anja did the practical challenges with kids. It was really interesting how different groups were differently interested and the results they produced. I brought a big chunk og my gear with me, so that the kids were able to try to use some of the pro gear as well.
On Thursday we also had a few hours long, Ptuj limited, Amazing Race, where kids, in their groups, were supposed to find their way through the race by completing challenges on the checkpoints. I was on one of those checkpoints too, but since it was one of the last ones, I managed to take a few snaps from some other checkpoints too.
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