Campy

Hmm, I haven't posted in awhile. I guess there are two reasons for that. One, there's no time. What little free time I have is spent napping, planning my classes, or napping. The second reason is that the internet hasn't been working the past two days.

That's ok though because I don't actually have a whole lot to say. We are almost finished with our first group of 2-week students (they will be leaving on Saturday). I have become pretty used to the camp schedule, but the job is still kind of stressful. I am finding that while I enjoy teaching kids Chinese, I don't enjoy having to deal with hyper kids so much and getting them to focus and whatnot. Anyway, there are only like 2.5 weeks left. I've almost been here a month already? Crazy. Alright, well I have to go prepare for my class... Today we're teaching body parts.

6 Minutes

Let's see, I have about 6 minutes and 20 seconds to write something before the next camp activity starts. Being a camp counselor really makes a person learn to use every single second of the day. How long does it take to walk from the office to my cabin? 1 minute; well, 59 seconds to be precise. How long does it take to get all of the kids in your cabin to walk to the bell (which is near the office)? A lot longer than that. One kid is trying to catch an insect and feed it to a spider, for the 10th time in the past 5 minutes. Another kid forgot that he had to go to the bathroom. The other three are playing tag, and if I'm lucky, two or three kids are actually paying attention and are ready to go with me to the next activity. When I'm not supervising or teaching some activity, or trying to get campers to follow directions in Chinese, I am frantically planning my next activity which involves thinking of new words to teach, and making a worksheet with these words, and drawing pictures depicting the word.

Hmm, 2 minutes, 27 seconds left. I forgot what it is like to be a 10 year old (there are 7-11 year olds at camp right now, about 40 of them. My cabin is 10-11 year olds). Was I like this when I was 10? Many of them simply don't listen. Can they hear me? Did they hear me say it the first 6 times? Have they already forgotten that I told them not to do that exact thing only 2 minutes and 27 seconds ago? Do they think that I have forgotten that I told them not to do that? Who knows...

I am really enjoying seeing these kids learning Chinese right before my eyes though. Most of them could not even say "hello" when they got here on Monday afternoon, and many of them can already say several kinds of sentences and more individual words. It's pretty neat.

Alright, time's up! C ya!

Almost Here

The first batch of kids comes to camp on Monday. Right now we have our first 24-hour time-off period. We've been doing orientation and set-up activites since I got here and it's all gone pretty well. I'm a little nervous that I don't really know what I'll be teaching on Monday, but I think I will be teaching a nature class and taking the kids on a little nature hike where I will try to incorporate some nature-related chinese. I wouldn't be too worried if it were just littler kids and I could teach them "tree," "lake," etc., but I am more worried about the older kids who might speak more Chinese and who will ask harder questions. I think I'll do ok though and hopefully the kids will enjoy it. I'm thinking I'm gonna try to get them to use compasses too.

I think that I am going to learn more Chinese myself this summer than any of the kids attending the camp though. It's really great practice because the staff all speaks chinese to each other more than English. I love it. The camp that we are at is pretty neat. Some of the buildings are a bit, um, 'rustic' (aka, old and kind of gross), but it is on a lake and I think overall it is a neat camp. The mosquitos haven't been eating me too bad and the weather has been ok. I think I am more afraid of getting a tick than anything else.

Hopefully I'll have a more interesting post next time after the kids have come. Zai jian!

Orientation

I don't have much time to write anything because I'm going to a devensive van driving class in about 5 minutes, but so far I am enjoying camp. We are in orientation for a few more days. I have enjoyed orientation because all the counselors from all different languages are at camp together. I love being surrounded by all these multi-lingual people. Every single one of the Chinese staff (there are about 20 staff altogether) speaks a third language besides Chinese and English. I'm getting to speak lots of Chinese, quite a bit of Spanish too, and I am listening to all kinds of other languages like French, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and even Finnish. Anyway, time to go learn to drive a van defensively. Zai jian!

Goin' to Minnesota to teach them kids Chinese.

So... does anyone remember how about a month ago I applied to be a counselor at a language summer camp in northern minnesota for the summer? Probably not. In fact, I'm not even sure I mentioned anything about it here. Well, about a week ago they got back in touch with me and wanted to do an interview with me. I told them that I didn't think it would work out logistically and that I would withdraw my application. The lady emailed me back asking me to reconsider, and I did. Yesterday around noon I interviewed with her, she offered me a job, I decided to accept, and now I have a 6:30 AM flight to catch to Minneapolis, MN. I'll be there through July 16th teaching kids Chinese and stuff. I haven't sat down and done the math, but mental math is enough to calculate that I will be making pretty bad money (it's probably like minimum wage), but I figure it beats making $0/hour sitting around here looking for jobs. Plus, this way I get to use some Chinese and pay homage to the motherland or northern minnesota where my ancestors emigrated from trying to escape the bird/mosquitos some two generations ago. Anyhow, hopefully it'll be fun! C ya!

There is no video for this entry because I have to go now and don't have time to find one. Sorry.