I’m back here at school, at least for a while. Actually, I just finished three weeks of English winter camp on Friday, and I’m back at my school for a week and a half to “lesson plan.” Nothing is actually required of me, I just have to sit here at my desk from 10am to 12pm and make it look like I’m doing something.
Let me tell you about winter camp. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it at first, but it turned out to be a pretty cool experience. Camp was Monday through Friday, from 9:00 to 12:00, and voluntary for the students. Class sizes were 8-9 students, but after attrition my class had only 6, and they were all relatively well behaved and proficient in English. During the first session, from 9:00 to 10:20, we taught a series of language based lessons. Mostly having to do with grammar, but some were pretty fun. Some hard-core old-school English teachers out there might say, “but grammar is fun!”, to which I say, nonsense! After first session, we had twenty minutes to practice for the last day’s performance, in which we had to teach the students something to perform in front of their fellow students and parents. I wrote a little skit for my students about English camp and their plans for winter vacation. It didn’t blow anyone away, but the kids didn’t embarrass themselves either, which as middle school students, was all they were really concerned about. After that, they had a twenty minute break, followed by session two. Session two ran from 11:00 to 12:00, and it was a chance for each teacher to present their own “activity-based” lesson. We taught two different lessons, one for 8 days, and the other for three days. My first lesson was about zombies, which I love, and the second lesson was about movies, which I also love, particularly zombie movies. Intesperced with normal class days were special activities such as culture day and golden bell quiz day. They mostly served to give both the students and teachers days off from normal lessons.
The best part of camp wasn’t the short hours, which I liked, or the small class sizes, which I appreciated, but my fellow native English teachers. I was very lucky to get a camp where everyone genuinely got along. There were eight of us, and we were all unique in our own ways, but we got along great. We hung out after school, having lunch and throwing parties. Even Melissa and I threw a party, and if you know me very well, should surprise you at least a little. It was so nice to have other English speakers around all the time, mostly just to bullshit with. I really hope we can remain close now that camp is over. Of course, there will be a certain amount of growing apart, but I hope we’ll hang out together at least once in a while.
Other than that, things have been going well. It’s been cold, and surprisingly snowy the last few weeks. I’ve still been riding my bike, even in the snow, which isn’t too bad. Beats riding the bus, at any rate. The next thing on our agenda is our long-awaited honeymoon. We won’t be leaving for another two weeks or so and we’re trying to decide exactly what we want to do. There are some things that are pretty much set in stone, like the night zoo in Singapore and lounging on the beach in Bali, but the rest is still wide open. I think I’ve convinced Melissa to take the PADI open water scuba diving certification course with me in Bali. I think scuba would be a really cool hobby that we could do together. Not that we would get to go very often, but if we travel as much as we hope to, maybe once or twice a year would be do-able. It really depends on where we end up. In some places it could be often, other places not at all.
I guess that’s about it for now. This is already one of my longest text-only posts ever. I know I keep saying this, but I’m going to try to post more often and keep my few readers (mom and Gene) satisfied. Talk to ya later!
