A free day at last!

Today is Sunday...so last Tuesday, we left the luxury of the SBC center where all 60 Americans had our training, in Gwangju. We all got dressed up and took the bus up to Mokpo, and had this formal meeting of the governor of the province. It is this government that set up the English camps. Then we got back on the bus and ate at a vegetarian restaurant - hooray! Then we said goodbye to half of the group. We were on two buses, and one would take the Haenam and Muan groups to their camps. The Goksong people and our group rode together. By the time we pulled up to our camp, it was dark, and it was sad to leave the other group and get off by ourselves! We didn't know what it was going to be like.

Principal Park met us at our dorms, and we got our room assignments. We all had separate rooms, thank goodness. And pretty strong fans, too. But you have to keep a window open, because of Fan Death. Fan Death is real :-) Anyway, we got fresh bed, uh, stuff (a bed cover, comforter and pillow), soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and laundry soap.

Day 1 of camp: we meet our students, but don't have to teach. The students were to create a team name, and make a poster and a cheer to represent their team. The Korean teachers pretty much took over, and after all day of this, we were all pretty much dejected and wondering why we were even around. But the kids were really adorable.

The next day we got into the actual teaching. The schedule was: breakfast at 7:40 am, Homeroom at 8:40, and the first class at 9. Lunch is at 11:45, then we have a "teacher's meeting" (hanging out in the air-conditioned teachers lounge drinking tube coffee). Then the next class starts at 1:20, then dinner. Maybe some camp games, then the kids work on their English journals ("Today at camp I feel ____"). Then they work on their song and dance, which they'll perform at the end of camp for Camp Idol. Our song is Upside Down by the A-Teens, which I've never heard before. We all have the songs stuck in our head: Dancing Queen, Uptown Girl, and Backstreet Boys!

So we did three straight days like that. Then today we had a field trip! It was exhausting, but we went to the Gwangju National Museum, then to a "Western" hotel for a "western-style" meal and taught the kids how to use a knife and fork. Then we went to the bamboo museum here in Damyang. This area is famous for the bamboo! We think the bamboo-forest fighting scenes in House of Flying Daggers was filmed here.

The best part of the day was that we got back at about 3:15 pm, and had the rest of the day FREEEEEEE. I took a nap until dinner, then Shelly, Kathryn and I walked to the Bamboo park for a bit. I'm still tired and want to get some more sleeeeepppp.

Oh, I forgot a few other fun things. On Friday night, six of us ventured into town to the local Hof (a place to get beer and snacks). We had some fun with the locals - we started out with two pitchers of Hite beer, and they bought us a bunch more. This beer is very very light though, so we didn't get hammered or anything :-)

The next night, Saturday, we had Survival Games for the kids. We took them into town to an elementary school gym and played games. Then the principal and the Korean teachers arranged a party for us! It was so nice. They had wine and beer and pizza and fruit and...soju (the Korean liquor)! We had a great time and bonded with the Koreans. Soju tastes OK by itself, kind of like sake, but we mixed it with Coke and it was delicious.

This camp for elementary ends on August 1st. We have a three day break, then start the middle school camp.

Our new thought is that Korea is "adorable"!!!