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[Yu_Bum_suk]

On Monday I was told that this year, our usual grade 1 high school sleep-over was going to be an English camp. I would be helping to conduct English activities 'from about 10 to 12pm', 'from about 10 to 12am', 'after dinner', �in the morning�, 'for two hours or three hours', or who the *beep* knows when depending on whom I asked. I went and asked the newbie English teacher, who was also supposed to be helping, and when I told him we were having English camp on Friday he thought I meant that we had to go to our school district's English camp. Well, how nice to see that he's been told even less than me. I found out from another English teacher that we'd be doing a speed quiz, a golden bell quiz, and I decided to try adding some English camp songs. After getting a rough idea of the schedule from the students on Thursday afternoon I recruited two guitar players and spent Thursday evening writing up quizes.

Friday morning rolled around and during first block I was supposed to teach a grade 3 class at the same time we were supposed to have our camp opening ceremony and also at the same time I wanted to go over the songs with the guitar players. I went to my grade 3 class, half of whom were asleep, and told them 'sorry, no English today', and then off to the opening ceremony. The Korean teachers had all the grade 1s lined up behind our grade 1 classroom annex, had set up a huge banner (all in Hanguel) saying �2006 English Camp�, and the principal and her entourage arrived to make a speech. Most of our activities were happening in the nearby music room, and a double-booked middle school class suddenly showed up for music class wondering what to do. I eventually got the guitar-players together to practice and my best student to make a translation of the songs.

I soon found out that a Korean teacher had already made up some speed quiz and golden bell questions; I was just the human tape-recorder, and my previous night�s work was in vain. The quizzes consisted of a select few answering questions while everyone else sat around giggling. For the golden bell quiz I realized we didn�t have anything to write answers on so I grabbed a student to use as translator, darted to the art room, and borrowed a bunch of small white boards and marker pens from the art teacher.

Then we were off for an early cafeteria lunch followed by a climb up a nearby mountain. I managed to stay behind for the climb and hang out with a few of the infirms. After eating a few bags of squid chips with Miss Sore Toe and Miss I-had-a-migraine-that-suddenly-disappeared and a lot of loitering around school, everyone finally came back three or four hours later to make dinner. By this time all the other English teachers had buggered off leaving just the homeroom teachers to oversee everything. I don�t know where all the camp stoves and food came from but soon everyone was in small groups making various Korean foods. I had brought along some Kraft Dinner to show what students in Canada eat but couldn�t find a spare stove and pot to put on a demonstration. I divided my dining time between a group that had made samgupsal and another that had made bulgogi. The kimchi pancake group and dulboki group seemed a disappointed, not understanding why I wasn�t at all keen eat with them. There were groups of students with cookers scattered about in the classrooms, on the annex balcony, on the steps, and even on the hard-packed dirt outside the building.

After my students had absolutely stuffed me with bulgogi there was another hour of cleaning up and loitering around, before a Korean teacher herded everyone back into the music room. After a few brief instructions all the Korean teachers left, leaving me in charge finally to conduct my English sing-along lesson with 100 giggly girls. Fortunately I had a microphone and a student-helper, and the students I got to bring their guitars did really well. Then as soon as I was finished the students queued up the norae-bang system in the music room and everyone started dancing and screaming to Korean pops songs while I went over to another part of the campus where the Korean teachers had started their piss-up. I stuck around long enough to be polite, went back to check on the students who were still norae-banging away, and then at about 10pm finally snuck away to find Cruisemonkey at the hof. The home economics teacher got tasked with supervising 100 girls who were starting to wander off all over the place all by herself for the night, and I was quite happy to leave things in her writhing hands.

All in all our inaugural stay-at-home English camp was a huge success by Korean standards and a complete waste of educational opportunities by western, but then isn�t that usually how things work here. At least I did get to do a lot of conversational English with my students and next year I�ll have some recollection of what happened and won�t be stuck wondering around all day long asking students �what are we doing next?�

[Hater Depot]

That is a great story, and so typical of how things often work. Thanks for posting.