It's ok, I never used that one anyway.

Greetings

When our Director approached us a few weeks ago about running one of her english camps we imagined scenes of canoes, archery, campfires, and good times: All staples of the camping we remember from our youth (long, long, long ago).

It turns out that aside from the good times, camping is slightly different in Korea. At least as far as english camps go.

We found out last week that the camp would entail one night's sleep in our Director's beachfront apartment with 10 children and no connection to the outside world (no phones, internet, etc).

Although we were a little worried about being able to contact the authorities in case of an emergency (running out of Kimchi, etc), we soon realized that even if an emergency did occur we would be of little use. Sadly none of the six words we know are "help" or "the little guy is on fire."

Our original plan called for a lot of time on the beach and some old school games like "What Time is it Mr. Wolf?" and "Do the Teacher's Laundry" (just kidding of course). But the arrival of Typhoon Sun Sun changed all of that and we were forced to change all of our games to the indoor variety.

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's take this one step at a time.


Joanna and I were pretty excited so we showed up at the school before the Director and found ourselves alone in the company of one the little campers. I'm not sure if it was a gift or a Korean declaration of war, but she presented us with what appear to be two sticks impaling several chicken hearts. Our horrors were abated, however, when it turned out that they were indeed gifts, and only chicken livers, not hearts...phewwwwf.


It turns out the warnings on elevator doors are just for show as we managed to fit in much more than the suggested maximum of 8 people. Here's 10 children and three adults cramming into one elevator. I'm sure that there's a joke to be made about sardines or clowns but I'm too lazy.



The ancient ritual of picking teams. In order to minimize the amount of Korean spoken (it was an english only camp) we separated the kids into teams and issued red cards to the violating team each time a child spoke Korean without permission. The children actually took the loss of the red cards pretty seriously and we had to separate a few fights.

To be honest, although Jo somehow managed to master it, I'm still baffled by the complex designs on the cardboard team-picking sheet. To the best of my knowledge it's some form of Greek Torture.


We included this picture as proof that there was some work done at the english camp, and also as proof that Korean children are much tougher than their western counterparts. The living room had no couches or cushions, but they all happily took to the floor. Canadian children would have refused to sit on the ground and waited for us to carry in some couches.

In fact, Joanna refused to work under the conditions, and after a few calls to her agent we finally got some pillows.



Here's a photo of the children helping to prepare the dinner (spaghetti, by the way). Initially, Joanna was a little upset at the idea of 10 year old children handling knives and was worried that someone might get hurt.

I, being the worldly scout that I am, informed her that things are different here and the children are much more mature. I believe that my final words on the subject were "Relax grandma, what could go wrong?"


And..... here you see a photo of my thumb after being surgically altered by little "Kevin." Although both Joanna and the Director thought that I might need stitches, I braved it out and will remember it as lifelong lesson on never letting children hold knives no matter what country I'm in.

And, as I'm being forced to do so, I would like to point out to all of you that Joanna was right and I'm a fool.




Here's a photo of the girls getting ready to go to bed. Don't be fooled by their sweet smiles and happy-go-lucky appearances. Although we can offer no legitimate proof, we're fairly sure that a riot broke out every time the door closed. We've been to rock concerts and political rallies but the sound these girls omitted puts them both to shame.

It took about 7 visits and just as many threats to send them to sleep in the boy's room, but they finally got to sleep around 1 AM.



As you can see by the photo, the boys were a little less willing to pose for the camera. Rest assured that they were just as crazy if not more so than the girls.

Joanna is a little more soft-hearted than I, but after the 5th bathroom/water break I was ready to implement some "Tough Love" in the form of push-ups. Jo, on the other hand, wanted to hold hands and recite some hippy nonsense that I've already forgotten.

Between my boot camp approach and her rainbow connection we managed to strike the right balance, and after a few push-ups, several glares, and a couple reminders that we were all still friends, they finally fell asleep.


After a hard night of drinking milk and playing "I spy" the children were tired and needed a little R n' R the next morning. After a little Uno and some Hot Potato we did a couple of writing drills and then had a massive balloon fight. I'm still loving the fact that we got paid well for all of this.

For the record, any time that milk and Uno is involved I will work for free.

Ah yes, I almost forgot about this badboy. Here's a beautiful drawing of me by little "Brad." The Korean writing means something about me and a chicken, and although he spelt my name wrong I can still feel the love.

Every teacher aspires to be caricaturized, and now that I have reached this plateau I want to thank the academy and my mother for always believing in me.

Anyway, camping was a great time and we look forward to doing it again next month. Hopefully the next time we won't have to fight off a typhoon and will actually be able to play outside.

Until the world can camp in peace free of typhoons our struggle will continue.

Cheers,

Shayne (and Jo)