Quick favors

Today's positive post:

I just finished my last English camp in Korea. It was very bittersweet. Anyone who has ever done English camps knows how exhausting they can be. They take a lot of planning and preparation, and when you live in a countryside like Bonghwa, you have to make sure you have everything you need because you can't afford that 1.5 hour ride to home and back to retrieve it. Regardless, camps are a nice break from my daily boring routine of classes since it fosters a totally different English learning environment from the classroom.

And I always have SO much fun.


I had some of my favorite students at this camp. I really liked the bunch because they were smart and enthusiastic about English. This makes teaching them more exciting and worthwhile on my part. Even though a lot of work goes into camps, I always enjoy doing them and getting to spend more time with my students (or with other wonderful students from other schools in the district).

The sad truth is, camps will be missed.

Yesterday after lunch, I waved over one of my favorite girls over and told her to buy me an ice cream. Without hesitation, she ran into the convenient store and came out with a nice cone.

I love that you can ask for something like that and not be reprimanded for it. And it's fun to see just how much my kids love and adore me! :-)

And the curse continues...

I know a lot of this is not really a curse and is really just due to Korean ways. But let's analyze for a moment anyway.

This is post-torrential rainstorm from camp #1 after the river washed up the rocks:


At elementary English camp #1 (read previous post), we were supplied with an overabundance of water from a torrential rainstorm. At elementary English camp #2, we hardly had any water! On day 1 the water had turned off and those in charge spent the entire day trying to fix it. For a few hours we had no water = kids could not wash their hands or shower or use the toilet. We were also worried because the following day was our water games day.

They had to bring in a firetruck in the evening to pump water from the river to give everyone just enough time to take quick cold showers.


Hmmm...and of course it rained on our water day and was beaming HOT and sunny on our active running day. We were also 20 students short of what we were told. And supplies went missing. And blah blah blah this camp was a curse.

But we were highly complimented on our hard earned efforts and ability to manage the crises. I say...well done.

CURSE: BITE ME!

p.s. I love my students. They're my bundles of joy.

The Curse of the English Camp

As I stated previously, planning for my elementary English camp was a pain the ass. And thus, I have declared the entire thing to be a curse. Here is why:

1) Initially we were informed there would only be 25 students. Then later told it was 75.

2) They changed the dates about 3 or 4 times.

3) We were never notified if there were going to be other native teachers working (there's 3 in Bonghwa but 1 had his own camps to do)

4) For our very first meeting (just about 3 weeks prior to camps), no one had prepared any sort of lesson plan. All that was available was a time schedule to follow.

5) The other native teacher and I planned EVERYTHING alone.

6) We find out we have 3 other native teachers, supposedly from South America. Why the hell would there be native English speakers from South AMERICA?

7) Nope, they're from South Africa.

8) The other native teachers live in a different city so are not available for any meetings.

8) Then there's just the whole pay situation. We were promised one thing, offered another (significantly less). This was frustrating because we spent countless hours planning by ourselves with no help from the other native teachers nor the Korean teachers.

9) The supervisor tells us we have to pay for all our supplies. WTF.

10) They were only going to give us 4 Korean teachers for 5 groups. Elementary kids do not speak that much English.

11) A week before camps, one native teacher fractures his knee and can no longer work the camp.

12) The other teacher and I have to restructure everything to make 4 groups instead of 5. And yes, by ourselves.

13) At 9:00pm the night before the first camp, one of the other native teachers is being rushed to the hospital due to a stroke (later find out it's a seizure) and her husband (the other native teacher) is going with her. So we now are down to TWO native teachers for 75 kids. Luckily, one of our friends was on vacation and was willing to help us out. We also eventually found another teacher from Yeongju as well.

14) We are not given any say in the opening ceremony, which of course was performed all in KOREAN at an ENGLISH camp.

15) Supplies...either missing or useless.

16) Everything for the most part was going well. Then we realized we were not invited to speak at the closing ceremony. They wanted it to all be formal and in Korean. While we understand the cultural aspect of having the chief of education there, we felt it was our duty as native teachers AND camp planners/organizers/runners to be at least a PART of the ceremony. A Korean teacher was going to give the speech in her broken and poor English using incredibly big words that children would not understand. When we asked if we could speak, we were denied this, which made us feel like our roles were unimportant. We had a big argument about that.

17) On our last day (the day we spend all outside playing water games), there was major flooding going on because it had rained all night long. The clear river turned muddy brown and underwent an enormous mood change:




Our food source could no longer drive to our camp because the roads were blocked due to mudslides and the fact that the roads were basically collapsing. So we had to drive all 75 kids to a nearby restaurant to feed them breakfast in the torrential rainstorm. We finally convinced the Korean teachers to buy a ton of snacks in case we got stuck at camp and had no more food. For our lunch, they went out and bought 85 cups of ramen noodles.


Since the roads were closed, our other 2 native teachers were not coming to camp since they had not slept over like we did (and it's about an hour away from Yeongju). So the other native teacher and I were stuck with 75 kids all day INSIDE while the Korean teachers were running around doing various crisis things. We got stuck playing a million random games just to keep them busy. Unfortunately, it was too hard to make them all that much English-stimulating, but we had to step up all alone and handle the kids by ourselves, so there shouldn't be any complaining.

We were supposed to leave right after lunch, but we were not free to go until 5pm when bulldozers were brought out to open up the roads, giving us a small time window to let us take the kids home. This is why the day was so messy:


So the whole camp process was a bundle of joy. Camp 1 is finished and I cannot believe I survived. It was the biggest pain in the ass I've had during my time in Korea...but if it weren't for the kids, I wouldn't still love my job.

The kids playing Horse, Love, Piggy Back. A good time. Watch the partners with one small kid one big kid when they do piggy back. A laugh worthy time.



Hello, my name is Amy and I am an English Camp survivor.

*applause* WELCOME AMY!

English Camps

Here is an update to my current state of being in the lovely South Korea. The past 2 weeks have been spent with my head strapped to a load of dynamite as another native teacher and I have been relentlessly fighting to plan and make our English camps this summer work. It is the first time Bonghwa has implemented English camps for the elementary schools, so no one seems to have any idea about how to run or plan things. This results in native teachers (2 of the 4 to be exact) planning everything, dates and times changing constantly, and constant battles about money.

I won't go into the details because they were messy and not fun. Basically, we were screwed over and had to put in all our time and energy into making this camp fun and bearable for the young kids. If it weren't for the kids, we wouldn't have tried as hard as we did. They're lucky it's us doing this and not some douchebags who could care less about the students.

Aside from that, I've been working intensely on my Taekwondo, impressively improving and ready to take on the black belt test come September. The gym, lacking entirely in any fans or A/C, is a deathly sauna everyday at practice. I've also participated in the hardcore training that his national competition team has being doing lately. It's pretty intense and difficult, but I feel quite flattered that he thinks I'm good enough to engage in the same sort of training. I've got a long way to go but it's good to be pushed that hard. Plus it's fun when all the boys yell "Yea Amy FIGHTING!"

Did I mention these boys are starting to really grow on me? They're all quite hilarious, fun, and very cute. They often enjoy stripping their shirts off and walking half naked around the gym and doing as many push ups as possible. They're all skinny but incredibly ripped. It's a shame they're all so much younger than me. Like...high school.

Summer vacation for schools has started! So this means English camps galore, and then my lovely vacation with Bitey Asian!

Also, I promised myself I wouldn't get mixed up in enjoying Korean pop music. But instead of dreading and hating it, I've come to embrace it. Thus, I've become quite the expert on the recent culture of Korean pop music.

/update