Discover Something New #15

Well things are coming down to the wire here in Long Beach, and it looks like it's going to be an interesting finish. All us leaders are rather fearful about how this program is going to end. Why fearful? It's difficult to explain the context for everything, but I want to share the excitement with all of you.
It all got more interesting at the end of the first International program. This group had been pretty quiet and behaved, compared to stories I'd heard about previous years. There were about 80 Spanish students that continually put up resistance to the rules and bedtime and such, but we managed to keep it contained. Until the last night of the program. I wasn't involved personally, because I'd already been moved to the second program, but apparently it all started when the Spanish students found out that they wouldn't get their $60 room deposit back because they had trashed their rooms. All hell broke loose. The Spanish started running around the building, yelling (mind you, this was the early morning hours), broke mirrors and equipment in the bathrooms, wrote choice phrases on the walls, and to top it all off, threw a rock through the office window at our site director. Fortunately the window was open and the rock missed the director, but still. It was at that point that the police arrived, and it took 6 officers (including the Long Beach Sergent) to get the group together and under control in time for their flight.
Now travel about a week forward and a mile away, to Second International camp. One of the major sources of conflict here from the very beginning is that the city curfew for anyone under 18 years old is 10:00. We don't make them go to their rooms until 11:00 or 12:00, but legally they must be on campus after 10:00. And on this campus (Brooks College) there's absolutely nothing to do except get into trouble. There's nothing here except concrete buildings and a parking lot. So the most interesting and stressful part of the day is always the last couple of hours.
There were only a few minor incidents until this last week. The night we got back from Vegas the real fun began. That night everyone was milling around as usual, about 30 minutes before bedtime, when suddenly, as if on signal, students from all over the campus started running to the back of the property. When everyone gathered there they started marching to the front, at least 100 of them. My first thought was that they were marching on the office (it had happened before on a smaller scale at the first program), but then they all stopped and just stood there, obviously waiting for something to happen. All us leaders were just walking in and out of the crowd, trying to figure out what was happening. Then one of the students from my hall camp and told me that the Spanish and Russian students had planned a fight between the two countries. Apparently they had been on the same bus to Vegas and had had a lot of conflicts, so two of them decided to have a fight that evening. In the mean time those two ring-leaders had gone to their friends to ask for help in the fight, until soon it became a planned fight of the entire Spanish and Russian groups.
There were a few moments of considerable stress for the leaders (including myself). I mean, as soon as one person tried to swing a punch, the whole group would explode, and there would be very little that the 10-12 leaders could do about it except call the police. Although apparently the Brooks College staff, one of our leaders, and two neighbors had already called the police, who arrived in a few minutes and started driving around the premises in a state of severe agitation. I like to think that the quick reactions of the leaders and police prevented anything from starting, but in fact it was probably the surprisingly large crowd that stopped the punching from starting. Several of the ring-leaders were overheard saying "there are too many people around, let's do it at 12:00." Fortunately we knew which students were organizing it and basically locked them in their rooms for the night, so nothing else happened. Seeing as this was about 7 nights until the end, we were very concerned about what was coming.
The next night seemed quiet, until Anne (another leader) and I walked around a corner and saw a large amount of sparks and smoke coming from one of the chain-link fences. At first it looked like the fuses on several fire-crackers had been lit. Upon closer inspection it seemed that strips of plastic had been threaded through the fence in the shape of letters and set on fire. When it was clear that nothing was about to explode we got closer, and read in flaming letters "Nancy (our director) is a bitch." At this point it might be useful to explain that Nancy is a very strong woman who takes no disrespect from anyone and runs this program pretty strictly, but she is certainly not a bitch. Anyway, as Anne and I got close enough to blow the plastic out, I looked down at our feet and noticed that on the other side of the fence there was a bottle of lighter fluid with the cap on fire. That caused some excitement, and after a few moments of jumping back in alarm I bent over and blew it out.
It soon came out that one of the college students had seen three of our kids lighting the fire, and one was an easily recognizable 14 year old Russian who lives on my hall. After a few minutes of all the leaders running all over campus to find him, we got him into the office, had the college student identify him, and then started pumping him for information. It didn't take long at all for him to say that he'd just been following two other Russians, both of whom had been caught with alcohol on campus the day before and were being sent home (and they were also living on my hall). They were extremely angry about it, and somehow managed to slip away from the 24-hour supervision they were supposed to be under. Then it seems they decided to express their frustration by setting fire to a fence. And again the Brooks College security, the police, and all the EF leaders were stirred up. Needless to say, the two arsons were quickly taken to a hotel off campus until their flight. The little guy, surprisingly, was not sent home, much to the chagrin of the Brooks College staff.
Around this time we started hearing rumors that the Russian students thought that the leaders hated all the Russians. This might have emerged from the preceding events and what happened in Vegas (which I won't go into), and wasn't exactly true... at least, no more true than their actions warrented. And if punishing students for breaking US laws constitutes national prejudice, then I guess it would be true. We didn't make much of it, but tried to be more careful about complaining about our "trouble-makers." Things were quiet for a while after that, but a different kind of excitement was coming. As background, you should know that in the first week of the program we caught several students (specifically one psychotic Russian girl) with empty alcohol containers in their rooms. The police were called to Breathalyzer them, but they didn't find any alcohol in them. They were pressed pretty hard to admit that they'd been drinking, but all of them stuck to their stories that friends had left the bottles. They still might have been sent home for breaking the drinking law, but the parents of the Russian girl had their lawyer call EF to say that they would sue, and there was no evidence that the students had been drinking. In the end they weren't sent home. It's also important to remember that the parents of these students can afford to send their kids abroad for a month at the cost of $4,000-$5,000, and many of them are quite rich and powerful.
So this all passed by, until in this last week we suddenly got a call while at a dance at Universal Studios, saying that Radio Moscow was broadcasting all over Russia that Russian students were being abused and mistreated by EF Long Beach. Imagine our shock at suddenly finding ourselves to be infamous, in Russia! The story was that one of their students was found with beer bottles in their room, and was taken to the police department and kept there all day without food or water (or beer!) and was interrogated like a criminal. In Russia I can imagine that it would be unbelievable for such a big deal to be made of under-age drinking. Of course it's an absolutely ridiculous story in any case. The spoiled teenagers aren't used to following rules, so they call their parents and exaggerated the story, and the parents then start using their connections to make a big stink over it. But still the fact remains that everyone in Russia who listens to radio thinks that their children are being horribly mistreated here in our program. It strikes me that this might be the closest I ever get to being famous. :-)
Two nights ago I apparently slept through a large rebellion at 4 am. A number of students (ranging from 30-60 depending on who you ask) started running and screaming up and down the halls, throwing water-balloons, hiding all over the outside of campus, gathering large groups in different rooms, etc. It took some of our leaders several hours to get everything under control, while the Brooks security was panicking and threatening to call the police if we couldn't control our students.
The last few nights have been okay, but that's because most of the students are in San Francisco. Tonight they come back, and it will also be their last night on campus. So whatever they've been planning or wanting to do will go down in a few hours, especially considering that our power to send them home will be somewhat less effective when they're going home in several hours anyway. I'm actually curious what will happen, but some of us are actually frightened. I'll let you know!

In other news:
Trip to Chicago: August 9th-16th

Firsts:
-Dressed in drag (= dressed like a woman) for a cross-dressing fashion show with the students from my hall. We won first place!
-Rode in a limo (prize for winning the competition).
-Ate McDonald's hamburgers while riding in a limo down the Hollywood "Walk of Fame" street. I would have felt like the coolest person on earth if the limo wasn't packed with another 13 people from my hall. :-)

That's all for now! Take care everyone! -C