I have actually completed two of the three camps taking place during the winter season. I started with 6th graders on the first and took 5th graders the second go-around. The last week of February will be our last camp held for 4th graders. A lot of the other EPIK teachers have had to make everything from scratch and run it themselves. I on the other hand have the benefit of coming into a team of English teachers and a school that had been previously running them. This meant my responsibilities fell to planning 2 subjects (of 4 total) and running the orientation. Matthew, who ran winter camps last year, gave me one piece of advice before he finished his contract at Hae Song. "Focus on having fun," he said to me, "don't worry as much about the English." I did just that! He was right too by the way because with two 75 minute lessons a day if you just focus on having fun the English follows in line rather nicely.
Orientation consisted entirely of goofy ice breakers and was crazy easy. I chose my words carefully just there because I did in fact teach them .. gasp! .. using crazy as an adjective to mean "very." They really enjoy using the phrase "that __________ is crazy crazy" (No worries, they know it's slang and that they should only use it when addressing their elders, principals and other people of influence - har har).
I've mentioned this a few times but for the sake of everyone hopping in now - Matthew and Blair left school at the beginning of January thrusting me into the role of longest native-English speaker at Hae Song. Janice, the head of the English Dept. left about a month before they did and now Amy our teaching assistant has gone too. I used this influence and divine power to swing my choice of winter camp classes. I didn't want to be greedy so I only asked for PE but (you can tell by the pictures!) I got cooking too. This really gave me a carefree two weeks consisting of cupcakes and capture the flag. I had a wonderful time doing it and it was a pretty drastic change up in terms of work load from what I've been used to. In fact, since about Christmas my schedule has been pretty easy-peasy. School will be starting up at the beginning of March and I'd tell you a schedule if I had one but I don't so I won't. I am relying on the oft-reliable fact that I won't know my schedule until a day prior of it starting.
If there was lots of word repetition and generalized general silliness throughout this post you can blame it on my current reading; Catch 22. How did I go this long without reading this book!?!
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