Almost 4 weeks, an entire month, I have been an English Teacher! Pretty crazy, time has absolutely flown by. Last weekend I finished my first camp with my main group of students and I must say I was definitely the luckiest guy in camp. Despite a few early speed bumps my class turned out to be probably the best class in camp, at pretty much everything. Being their teacher was an awesome experience and for the first time in many years I can say I didn’t mind going to work (don’t know how hard to believe that is.) We went out in historic fashion with a skit I had to help write about the Nickelodeon teen-girls show Lizzie McGuire. So we performed a play that turned into a musical with dancing and singing in the end, but the true highlight was my student Jason.
Jason’s big moment was during the musical dance part he got to do 2 cartwheels across the stage, which he practiced about 70 times in class. So of course when the big performance came Jason adjusted and went full blast into his first cartwheel with everyone looking in amazement in the audience. Of course when he went flying through the projector screen behind the stage the amazement turned into a slow murmur of laughter. Undeterred Jason ran to his position on the other side of the opposite from me. Since we were on opposite sides I was mouthing to him, “Jason, no more cartwheels, no more cartwheels.” Which Jason interpreted as, “Do another cartwheel, do another cartwheel.” So, just like that he did another cartwheel across the stage, except for this time he went flying Chris Farley style crashing through a table and took out about half the set. Now the murmur of laughter evolved into a subtle roar. Yet, still a trooper Jason collected himself together and finished out the dance part of the play, to my utter amazement, and everything went pretty well. However, at the performance in front of the parents there were no cartwheels.
After my three-week campers went home I got my new group whom were 13-14 year olds and spoke a lot lower level of English. This was a much less serious camp and these kids behavior reflected it. With out talking too badly about these kids I will simply read a passage from a goodbye letter the worst one, Sarah, gave to me. “Teacher, camp was much funny. I was a good student right?! You will miss me? Just kidding, I know I bad.” No sooner did I read that last little part aloud to Steve did that goodbye letter make a sweet bank shot into my trashcan amidst his laughing at the pained look on my face.
All in all, Camp was awesome. I met some good people from all over the world and I can honestly say we rocked Jochiwon to the best of our ability. As for now, it’s off to Seoul..
