Second Half of "Hollywood Week" Summer Camp

Finished! This week FLEW by incredibly fast, I think finishing at noon + afternoon nap helps a lot. As for the camp, this week's crew of 18 students are finished and next week's batch will start on Monday. I hear that there are more 6th graders and less 3rd and 4th graders so hopefully some aspects will run smoother.

Above are the snacks! Caramel popcorn curtsey of my Co Teacher Amy ("So easy! But I hate cooking and now I'm tired.") Also home-stirred peach and lemonade. Also a little something I learned from my first grade science fair: chocolate and cereal crushed to together, held tightly for to melt, and cooled in a fridge to make a nice crunch ball!

SUMMER CAMP!

Hey! Apologies about the month between posts. Let's get back in action with some pics from summer camps. Summer camp are a couple of weeks, and mine started on Monday. It's called 'Hollywood Week!' and it's most based around movies. So, for example, we'll practice ordering food at a fake concession stand, we talked about clothes by using superhero costumes as examples, and so on. 

It's very different from normal classes because there's half as many kids, but it mostly feels like twice as much work because I have students from 3rd, 4th, 5th, AND 6th grades who are all at various levels. Thus breaking them up into groups and making sure they understand directions varies greatly between every student and requires a bit more energy.

But good news is that the camp ends at noon! So I get a couple hours of general prep and free air conditioning every day!

Above are the students practicing their 'trailers'. We watched a few trailers and they rated them with stars. Then I had a few greatly abridged versions of the trailers for Shrek and Kung Fu Panda typed up and here are the students practicing before they filmed themselves (on their own smartphones haha).

Below is a few exerpts from their journals. "Hot because is Earthot" is so factual, it's scorching outside!

Lastly below was the final activity for the day: a scavenger hunt to end on a fun note! Also, they instead of having to watch them complete all the challenges they can just take a picture of the missions on their phones...While I relax.... : )

KOREA-BBIAN BAY! KOREEA-BBIAN BAY!

Last Saturday morning I got up at 8:00 AM and hopped on the subway for to hop on a bus for to go to the Seoul metropolitan area's only WATER PARK!

Getting there involves a 40 minute subway ride to Jamsil station. Then a 30 minute wait for a specific bus (which is special because it has a standing room policy so that people PACK into the bus until all the isles are stuffed), that bus takes 1 hour to travel down south to the Everland Amusement Park and Caribbean Bay duel facility.

We were running a little behind, so where as some friends got there about 9:30 to wait for the 10:30 opening time, our group got there about 11:00. The line for tickets were still an hour long, but after about 45 minutes we were in the last stage until we bought tickets and then we turned around and the hundreds of people that were waiting behind us were GONE. They cut off the number of people allowed in the park at a certain point and I was the LAST person at the ticket window when it was all said and done.

So we get in and half the rides were closed for some reason so the lines for the slides that were open clocked in at 90 minutes EACH ahahha so i got a lot of quality time waiting with friends


The rides were fun and all and in the 6 hours we were there we got to ride three. But prob the most fun was the last hour we spent in the wave pool:

The wave pool is a massive pool where every 3 minutes or so a BIG wave starts at one end (signaled by a massive fog horn) and then by the time it gets to us it just bowls you over. OH that green looking water is to signal where people with out life jackets can go -- life jackets are $6 a pop -- but we played a game where we would lineup at the green line and pick different ways to get knocked down. So that was the last hour. Was a good time all around, but a loooong day.

NAMHAE!

I have no idea where the last week has gone. Been a busy 10 days!

Two weekends ago I went to Namhae Beach. That's located on the south cost of Korea:

I went with about 7 people that I knew - we took a 7:30 bus that arrived in the town of Namhae at about 11:45ish. We were only SSHHH'd once, and the bus was REALLY comfortable so it wasn't bad at all. There are about 3 foreign teachers in that town who have opened their doors to people coming to stay over -- partially because they are the ONLY three foreigners and they enjoy company. The next day we took a bus about 30 min to the beach:

The Saturday was spent in the water, eating ramen in lawn chairs under trees, playing football and just generally relaxing and enjoying the beach. A friend of mine took these pics with some filter or something on there - the weather was pretty great actually, prob better than it looks here.

At the beach we met up with two or three other small groups and then the 20?ish of us headed to ANOTHER beach about twenty minutes away where one of the guys helps out a kayaking business. Now THIS town had nothing. I mean rice patties, electricity, probably 30 residents and that's it. 

That night we all chipped in $10 and cooked up some fish and ramen (yes, more ramen). Also that $10 bought A LOT of fireworks.

Lotte World!

Friday and Saturday were pretty mellow, met some new people, cooked A LOT of Mexican food, and enjoyed the weekend.

But Sunday night myself and a few friends went to LOTTE WORLD!

It's amazing because they price it staggered on what time you go -- before 4pm $40 ($40!?), after 4 its like $30 and then after 7 (so from 7 to 11pm) it's only $15.5!!

OVER DUE TEACHERS' DAY GREETINGS!

One if the biggest differences between working at public school and at a private academy is that at the private academy the parents/The Moms are always bringing in gifts in the form of food or little treats for the teachers. That is virtually non-existent at public school and that's fine by me, I can go without pizza or doughnuts pretty easily. Not that I wasn't grateful last year because at 7 or 8 classes a day with 5 min breaks, a piece of pizza premium fuel. Never the less Teachers' Day was last month and these were the 3 things I received:

THE LAST 3 DAYS

The picture above was taken after school. I had to 'desk warm' for six hours... so after five hours worth I was pretty bored. I went outside and hung out with the 6th grade boys. They are obsessed with my iPhone (we are all saying 'iPhone' in the picture) and I showed them some basketball street-ball moves for the last hour of the day.

Why I had to desk warm was because of another sports day, or "ah teacher I'm very sad, today is running day" to the students. Thus instead of five straight classes I only had two classes. And in one of those we had a birthday party for half the class!

Flash back to 2nd period on Friday. It's the boy in the blue shirt's actual birthday, but that the school provides cakes for all the June birthdays:

The first picture is myself and the June birthday students making my famous "Angry Bird" face. And the last picture is the aftermath.