The Days

The regular Schedule:
 

Calisthenics and Rise and Shine 

In the early morning (7:30) the counselors wake us up, but said like this it sounds like “Torture time”, wisely they call it Rise and Shine, doesn’t it sound much better? All of us hurry to get dressed and brush our hair, because if you don’t, you will have to wait for everybody to eat before you. So we all hurry up to calisthenics and wake up, how could we not with all that stretching? Anyway our fantastic day begins like that, and it’s good, ‘cause we would fall asleep on our breakfast tables if not…

Breakfast Song:

 B-B-B-Breakfast beautiful breakfast

You’re the only M-M-M-Meal that I adore

When the s-sun shines over the ORANGE JUICE

I`ll be waiting for you at the kitchen door.

KP= Kitchen Patrol

The tables for lunch and dinner aren’t set magically and it isn’t the job of the cooks or the counselors to do this either.
Each day there is a different street which has to do the KP (it is announced every morning during breakfast)
For KP you have to set the table: putting the plates, the silverware (forks, knifes and spoons) and the glasses. Even though the job may sound a bit dry, it’s actually always really fun, because you can talk and giggle with your friends.

Meals

On a day with a regular schedule there are three meals:

-         Breakfast

-         Lunch

-         Dinner

 For breakfast there is everyday the same choice, but there is a large selection: from cereals to fruit salad and yogurt to bread with all sorts of supplements, for example cheese or marmalade.
To drink there are different sorts of tea, orange juice or milk and of course coffee for the counselors.

 For lunch and dinner there are always different things to eat: pasta, vegetables, meat and spätzli for example, during every meal you are able to take some salad from the salad bar.

A special thing for lunch and dinner is the meal presentation which is always presented by a brain train group. The brain train people think about how they could present the meal (which is before the meal, and only known by that brain train).  We had many funny or interesting meal presentations:
Pasta was presented under a Christmas tree, chopped veal during a spelling bee or chocolate mousse by Spongebob and Patrick during a rock concert.

 
After every meal there are Announcements concerning everybody in Hometown:
"announcements, announcements, announcements…yes?"

The counselors announce what will happen during Chill Out Time and Breaktime or where the villagers will meet for the next locomotion or activity. Sport tournaments are also presented and villagers who have lost something (their nametag for example) can ask the others for help in finding it.

During the lunch and dinner we sat in countries,
-Canada
-England
-New Zealand
-Ireland
-Scotland
-Australia
with groups of villagers of mixed ages and nationalities.
 

Brain Train

 It’s our first activity after breakfast, and though the name sounds “school-like” it's actually lots of fun, we learn English with games or other lots-of-fun-activities. At the beginning of the “Hometown permanence” we get interrogated by our future counselors that (like the talking hat in Harry Potter) divide us in different groups of English level. We have interviewed a guy from one group and here is what he said…

Hannah: In which group are you?

James: I’m with Minny.

H: Do you enjoy it?

J: Yes, it’s cool.

H: What’s the best thing you did till now?

J: The best thing was the “lesson” about the holidays.

H: Do you ever get bored in Brain Train?

J: No, never.

H: Thank you, James.

J. Bye bye, Hannah

Locomotion

Locomotion is the name for the Activity time, where we chose one activity out of several options, which was always a mixture of sports acitivties and calmer activities.
 

"Everybody's doin' a brand new dance now
(Come on baby do the loco-motion)
I know you'll get to like it
If you give it a chance now
(Come on baby do the loco-motion)
My little baby sister can do it with ease
It's easier than learning your ABC's
So come on, come on,
Do the loco-motion with me "
 

Swing Dance

In Locomotion we had the chance to learn swing dances. These were East Coast Jive & Charleston. We had a lot of fun learning them. Luke, our dance master, told us some figures, moves and steps. Between these lessons we had time to practise them and were aught to create own ones.

Cooking

Cooking was one of the first Locomotion activities. In fact we were (Gilligan, Casey, Pivi, Vicky, Marissa, Melanie, James, Jasmine and Amy) nine people in all. We made delicious deserts and had lots of fun. On the first day we made lemonade and bread with peanut butter and jam.

On the second day we made cookies with chocolate and peanuts. Finally the third day we made an apple dessert cake. All of them were delicious of course.

Pictures of other Locmotions                                                               

Frisbee	Twister
Outdoor Games	Painting

Newspaper Article on the Locomotion offerings:

by Hannah

Today everybody chose a new activity for the following three days.
There were many new activities, like dancing, cooking, playing volleyball, origami and Ultimate Frisbee, probably all are very exciting!
I chose dancing and I can tell you, it is very, very cool.
 Luckily many of the villagers (and many boys) chose this category, so that we are a huge group.
Roger, just arrived yesterday, joined dancing, too.Luke and Marianne are teaching us and we started with the Jive.
First of all boys and girls were separated, so that Luke could teach each group.
 We were taught the first step, which is also the "standard-step". Nobody had any big problems with this step.
So we started practising on our own in a big circle. When everybody knew this step we practised with couples.
So everybody got a partner and we stayed in the circle. In order that every girl could dance with every boy, the boys had to rotate.
But the standard-step wasn’t the only one. We also learned to turn around the girls and another funny step, whose name I forgot (sorry Luke).
This was the most difficult today. We had to jump and to change our feet very quickly.
I had the chance to dance with Roger and I think this was my funniest dance I ever had! He just dashed me around and I got very confused, because we always had to remember the: Rock-step!!!
The rock-step is part of the standard-step and this was quite the hardest one for Roger…but I think Roger has had the coolest and most practical shoes of everybody!!!
At the end we were able to couple all the steps together and just to dance and some of the villagers, who were very curious, watched us and had fun, too.We were all glad and proud to be able to Jive and maybe you’ll see us jiving tonight at "The Dance".Thank you Luke and Marianne- Sheryl

Yesterday’s evening program was about the immigration to America. We were the poor immigrants and our counselors tested us. But before that everybody chose their families and each family decided their nationalities, names and their age. At first we all took two belongings. The ship had three parts but unfortunately most of us were in the third class. It was very crowded that we even couldn’t sleep, there was not enough food and the water was disgusting (taking water as a belonging was a great idea). When we get out of the ship family by family we had our tests. First we all took an American name. Then most of us didn’t understand but Minnie was making another test while we were climbing up the stairs. After that, one by one we went to the other stations like: de-lousing, eye control, taking vitamin C, isolation room (where Becky was really rude) and finally the literacy test. Some of us suffered from hunger during the program but in the end everybody enjoyed it.

"I think the evening program was very interesting because we had an experience about immigration." And she adds that it was much better than reading a book about immigration. "At the beginning I was hungry but then I forgot about it. And I also liked the dinner program because it was very nice to see the counselors playing guitar and singing while we were having our dinner. "Amelia

"I liked the evening program because it was as usual interesting and fun". She also says she has laughed a lot." I also liked the dinner because of its atmosphere and the funniest part of the program was the literacy test by Archie." Alicia

These are what Amelia and Alicia said to me and what most of the people think about it. Seems like everybody enjoyed it.
 

Time to DISCO!!!!

Sunday was a super special day that I (Hannah) totally loved, by the way who doesn’t totally love waking up late, and for late I mean really late, with a "hakuna-matata" mood like "no worries for the rest of your days"? Well that was us Sunday morning, waking up at 9:45 and taking as much time as we wanted to go and eat a fabulous "brunch" provided by our fabulous "diner" cooking staff!  But that was not all, after this super-extra-fantastic beginning we took orders for a "special edition dinner" with our counselors being our waiters and all the villagers dressed in a really gala-dance-way (the guys looked like penguins and the girls looked like Christmas trees with all those gadgets and all). At the end we all rushed up in our rooms to get make-upped for the BIG occasion… DISCO time, guys!!!!!!!!!

Everybody rushed up to "Carnegie Hall" but we were blocked by Luke, who requested a ticket and a singing of the P.A.R.T.Y song! So it was dancing time for us!  Some of us girls actually got to dance with boys!!!! There was Luke dancing in a robot-like way, the big guys dancing funky and hip-hop, some smaller ones making some kind of "cartwheel competition" (I didn’t investigate, I was too busy enjoying myself), and lots of girls dancing in groups and laughing a lot. Some time later we all sat down for the elections… We all voted for our laziest, craziest, most beautiful, friendliest hometowners and all of the elected got some kind of diploma in craziness etc. etc. And at the end of all this fun we all danced a few "lentos" and then it was movie time, looking at a last year’s movie. Then it was good night for all Hometown and I think there was never a more enjoyed night’s sleep!

Rodeo Drive & Hometown's friendliest, craziest and most beautiful girls	The Restaurant

Bafa-Bafa

State Fair

One night, Parks and Wrecks organized lots of fun! This is briefly what happened at the State Fair, but we all know this, so why should you go on reading?? So I’ll try explaining what actually happened that night. I saw a lot of grumpy faces before the fair "Why do we have to pay for evening program? It’s unfair!!" If we had only known, we would have paid double! There were so many activities that I can’t count them on my fingers, from the terrible cinnamon-gum game to a game where you threw whipped cream pies at Minny. There was a jerky-looking-Archie that was paying people to kissing them on the cheek, leaving a big red glob of lipstick (It’s quite a sad thing if you think of it) and, even though there were disgusted faces at the beginning, nearly everybody got one or (lots) more kisses! There was a bite-the-apple-in-the-freezing-water game that a lot of people played and got soaked in. There was a fantastic popcorn machine that made lots of Hometowners happy. We threw clothes pins at targets, ran the three-legged race, arm-walked the wheel-barrow, and mouthed the ball-on-the-spoon-race. And now, is somebody still thinking that it was an unfair Fair???                                                                                        

Bingo	Telling the Future

Pictures from other Evening Programs

Roses and Thorns

To get the chance to talk about all the good and bad things that happened to every villager and counselor, every evening after the evening program, each street meets to do Roses and Thorns. Roses and Thorns means to name a good thing and a bad thing that happened to each person individually during the day. The good things are the roses, the bad things the thorns.
It helps to live better together, to understand the others and to share or solve problems.

In Piccadilly Circus, the young boys not only have Roses and Thorns but they also play a game called "Stickgame."

The Stickgame is a really weird game, where you have to figure out the rules. It goes like this:
Everybody is sitting in a circle, one person is standing and holding a stick in his hands.
Now he points on different people and objects, while saying the saw:

"The Stickgame, the Stickgame, everybody loves the Stickgame, but if you think you know the rules of the Stickgame tell me right now."

After having finished that he says the name of a person of the circle, this name changes or stays after every round and that's what you have to find out. What are the rules for picking this child and saying his name?  Even though at the beginning for most of the players it didn't make any sense, bit by bit they figured out the rules – which are really logical.