English Camp 2011

January 25-26

This week Ryan and I got to go to our first ever English Camp! I feel a little bit bad saying it was not as much fun as I thought it would be and well I was shocked at the lack of English spoken.  I have many complaints about how camp went, the lack of fun activities, and the fact that the plain was a poorly thought out one to say the least however I mainly want to try to use this blog to share some of the photos I got and some of the poorly planed and dull events.

Ryan and I started our day out by heading in to school at 10 where we were greeted with tons and tons of invitations to fold, label, and stuff.  Around 10:30 we had a nice little assembly line working with some of our students when we were informed it was time to assign teams, and room assignments.  We only had on bus so half the kids went ahead to get their name tags and what not at came as we did the others in the lobby of the school.  By 11:30 kids were overly excited to go and when the bus showed back up at 12 they were bouncing off the walls.  They were short on seats on the bus so I got to sit in a special set by the front door that folded out of the wall and Ryan got to sit on the steps as we talked to the bus driver and found out one of his suns was in one of the middle school classes that had just moved up to high school.

The ride took us about 20-45 minutes and as we headed through the mountains we passed a nice big lake that was frozen and covered with snow where we could see people ice fishing.  The snow on the tress and in the mountains was quite a breath taking view and I could almost picture myself back home in the Smokey Mountains.  We arrived at the teaching facility to find the other half of the students waiting in a large room waiting for lunch.  Ryan gave a quick speech welcoming everyone to camp before we headed up to the main rooms for the teams and brook up for lunch. 

Ryan giving the opening speech:

After lunch we headed back down to the main area to start the "Mission Complete Challenges".  I was in charge of a mummy activity, and a pictionary game where a Korea teacher would sit behind me and show the kids the name of an animal and they would have one minute to act out as many as they could and have me correctly guess.  In order for them to move on to the next activity I had to correctly guess 7 animals in one minute.  Sadly this didn't go over to well seeing as how someone had added in animals like ostrich, mosquito, camel and so forth and I could not look over the list of animals before hand to even begging to have the slightest idea. 

Here are some very funny photos I got of the kids wrapping each other in toilet paper to make mummies:

Getting them all to stand still was not easy

Please note this mummy's super cool shoes, Ryan calls them pimp shoes

Time for the first group of kids to bust out of their mummy wraps

I really don't know what is going on here

This little boy was worried he wouldn't be able to breath

I think this team needed a little help

I think most of the students liked the mummy game the best.

Ryan was in charge of a game called "Word Search" where he gave each group a sheet of paper with words on it, and then a packet of paper, scissors, and glue and they had to cut out the letters they needed to make the words (sadly we had 10 teams with about 9 people on each team and only 10 pairs of scissors and Ryan had up to 4 or 5 teams at his station at some points). As Ryan ran this game he also had to run a "Tongue Twister Game" where the students had 30 seconds to get the tongue twister right before they had to start over and pick another one.

Some of the teams at Ryan's challenge.

The other teachers had games like "find the hidden scroll and translate it", "guess the capitals", "where's waldo", "rock, paper, scissors", and "catch the word" and well sadly most kids didn't find any of these games appealing or too exciting.

A photo of the winning team.  Some of my favorite students were on that team so I couldn't help but be happy for them when they came running up to me shouting that they had won.

Once we were done with all the challenges (about 5:00) we started the cooking contest back up in the team rooms.  I offered to help Anne teacher with her team that was making ham and cheese sandwiches.  Well the sandwiches didn't take long at all so once they were done the kids were now board and really hungry.  Dinner was not until 6 so I tried to entertain them with Home Alone 4 (a mix between Home Alone and Richy Rich).  Finally at about 6:30 I gave in and let my kids eat as I went to meet up with Ryan and a few other teachers to judge the food contest.  Sadly what the team made is what they were eating for dinner and some teams messed up their meal so we had a lot of hungry kids. 

Photos of my kids amazing sandwich making skills:

Giving everyone something to do when there are too many kids and only so many things to do to a sandwich turned out to be a challenge.  So one kid ripped lettuce, one kid washed it, one kid cut (or well finally chopped) the cheese (and ate most of it), one kid cut the meet, one put on the pickles and so on and so forth.

You can't really tell but Dean is over there "handing out with the coats"

Some of the other dishes the teams made.

After dinner the kids had about an hour (from 7-8) to write an essay about what they had been doing at camp and what they had learned.  Some of them were really great and others needed a little work but in all fairness our ages ranged from 8-12 so most of the little kids just drew us pictures.  Sadly I hate to admit but Ryan, I and a few other teachers were all about in tears over this one little boys drawing who is in a phonics level class, meaning he is still learning letter sounds, words, and well is very new to English so all in all we were quite proud he spelled everything right.  And well let me be honest, if I had to go to Spanish camp right now I couldn't do anything other than draw a photo and put together random words I know.

Working on their essays.

Next each team was given some blocks and an hour to make something and then write a short speech about why they made it.  Some teams came up with some pretty creative speeches. 

It's a windmill

Shopping cart

Another windmill.  This team did a good speech on how their team was like a windmill and that when they worked together they were a powerhouse....and sadly as good as it was I cannot fully remember all of it. 

All the projects

Then it was time for light out, but because Korea was playing Japan in soccer at 10:30 that really didn't happen.  Also because so many kids were still hungry our boss went out and got some mondu for all the teachers to fry up for them as a late night snack as we all got suckered in to a teachers meeting where a certain someone rambled for over an hour in Korean, accomplished nothing, and turned off the soccer game....I keep leaving to go check on the students.  A few girls were upset they couldn't hang out with me because they thought that was what English Camp was, and many boys were also upset because they wanted to watch the soccer game with Ryan. 

Photos of the kids before bed and as they watch the game:

Grace Teacher and some of her girls

Two of my favorite students

Andy going crazy watching the Japan VS. Korea game



Teacher what's wrong with my flag??



Sadly the next morning all the kids were upset because Korea lost after a great game.  Ryan and I popped up to pack up and get ready for the day ahead around 6.  We had some bacon and sausage delivered to us at 7:30 to cook up for the kids.  Around 8:30 Ryan and I were "summoned" down to the main room for the "early bird photo challenge" which turned out to be just us with each team getting our photo taken.  Some of the smarter kids quickly put together that it was not a challenge and there would not be a winning team and were not to happy. 

Breakfast:

Jasmine had her teams all sitting in a circle, passing the food around, and behaving.  It was quite a sight to see.

After about 1000 photos of us and the 10 teams were taken I could only find these to show for it, I really wonder what happened to the other ones. 

And then it was time for the award ceremony. Every student got a certificate for completing the 2011 Winter English Camp. For some reason the names on the certificates were in Korea and Ryan got to call all the kids up to the stage one at a time team by team. Sadly after only getting through one team Jasmine came up and called out the names and Ryan just got to congratulate the whole team as a whole for completing the camp. We also gave out awards for the best leader on the team to one girl and one boy, best essay (which somehow got messed up and the poor little girl that got first somehow got third and the winner was someone we didn’t even pick) and an award to the overall first place team.

Ruby getting her certificate of completion from our owner.

Some of the teams with their certificates.

Ester won the best teammate award for the girls.

Dean the winner for the boys of the best teammate

Sweet little Clara the winner of the essay constest.

Around 11 we loaded the first group of kids on the bus to head back to school.  Ryan and I were left behind with our boss and a few other teachers to wait for the next bus.  We were told to play "rock, paper, scissors" in hopes to amuse the kids but sadly that only worked for maybe 20 minutes before the kids got board and started running around like crazy. 

Here are some photos of the fun we got to have with some of the kids before loading up the last bus back to school. 

Ryan loved his pink earmuffs.....

And then the rightful owner wanted them back

And here are some photos of the snowy mountains. 

And last but not least a few photos of how they had the rooms set up.  There are no "western beds" rather traditional Korean style beds. 

Every room was set up for 4 people with floor mats, blankets and pillows in the closets.  There was a huge open area with a small T.V., then a small kitchen with a fridge, stove, and sink, and then of course the bathroom. 

Well I guess that is camp, for now at least.  This blog still needs a little work with some touching up here and there.  I am sure I will continue to remember things and add them later and I am still trying to think of how to describe somethings that happened but for now I guess this is a start.