I began work very early on the last day of 2011, a little before eight, which was business as usual in Dec Camp.  We had a fairly normal day until the evening when the cooks laid out a Ukrainian new year's dinner with candles, wine (ok, alcohol-free wine), and a vast spread of traditional food.  I can't remember much of what we ate.  I can remember trying to enjoy it but not quite managing.  The atmosphere was really nice though, everybody was very gracious, talking quietly in English, Ukrainian and Russian.  After dinner, we took the children out onto the hill to make smores, which are an American camp tradition; chocolate, biscuits and marshmellows are all impaled on a stick and roasted over an open fire.  Then, we watched fireworks explode in bursts of colour above the village in the valley below while the clock struck midnight and everybody screamed and hugged each other.  Some children gave me new years' cards, which, actually, really touched me.  Inside they said things like: "I hope that you like Ukraine and that you'll visiti it again and again", "I wish you happiness, health, incredible life" and, slightly bafflingly, "I wish you to be the most adorable actor".
At half twelve it was lights out and once Vitalic and I had made sure the boys where in their rooms on the fourth floor we met up with the others in the downstairs hall where, with the children asleep, we started binge drinking.  Someone had brought bottles of shampanskoye from Odessa, a sweet, fizzy white wine that has been grown in the south of Ukraine since Soviet times.  At some point, I'm not sure when, we moved to Luda's cafe in the forest where we bought more champagne at £3 a bottle.  One of the teachers, Hillary, had brought of absinthe from Poland and we all tried some.  The first glass I drank I really liked but with the second, I let the flame last too long and it burned my throat as it went down.  By half four we were all very, very drunk and decided it would probably be for the best to head back as work began the next day in four hours.  When we got back to the camp building, Susanna told us that two of the children, Sasha and Dasha, had gone missing.  I thought about everything that could happen to them in the Carpathian mountains in winter; hyperthermia, bears, wolves, locals.  We headed down to the village hoping that that was the direction they had gone rather than wandering into the forest.  After we got down the hill, I tried some shitty disco bar which was so full of people that I didn't see Dasha until she was a foot from me, which was apparently when Dasha saw me too.  Her eyes widened and she jumped on the spot then ran to Sasha on the other side of the room and they both climbed under a table in some incredibly poor attempt to hide.  Now that I knew they were safe I wasn't concerned anymore, really I was just angry.  Well, angry and drunk.  "Get out", I roared "You are in so much shit!"  We took them outside and frogmarched them back to camp without further incident, then, finally, I went to bed.