And That Was That

Finished camp yesterday. Such a weird feeling. Time passed by so quickly. Have been around the same people in the same place for 4 weeks. As the dude said in the Shawshank Redemption, I became “institutionalised”. Got to Seoul in the afternoon and I kept thinking that passers by were various students from the camp. Tell ya one thing, it was great having a steak sandwich yesterday!

I have to say, I really enjoyed the camp. Better than my expectations. The students were wonderful, especially my home room class, G2. They were characters. We all went out with a bang on Thursday evening, with a talent show and farewell party, with booze! I think ours was a bit wacky. A skit on Cinderella. They worked in a part where Cinderella goes to English Camp and has constipation. I’ll explain some other time, if I put up pics.

It was emotional saying goodbye yesterday. G2 class gave me a page on which they have all written messages . Then, there were tears when the goodbye moment came. Aw, they were a nice group of students and I will miss them a lot.

Today, I take the slow boat to China. Hope it all goes smoothly!

Gotta Know When To Hold'em

Week 3 done. Only 4 more teaching days left here. It sure has flown!

This week was fairly tough. A lot of tired students. Half of them had job interviews and presentations to prepare for, so they were up until 3am most nights!

50 of them were caught drinking last weekend. The camp has a rule of no alcohol for students. A lot of them were nabbed for boozing in their rooms. I have to say, it was a silly thing to do, considering it's a small hotel and they could easily be caught! If they wanted to drink, surely they could have thought of a better plan than drinking in their rooms and making lots of noise! 2 students were even found roaming the streets of the nearest town (15km away). Gas, cos and they were 2 quiet girls!!! I can't imagine the Chinese getting into trouble like that!

Gambling took over the place this week. The Thursday night activity was a Texas Hold'em poker tournament. I wasn’'t so sure if they'd actually be in any ways interested in poker. I had asked a few about poker the previous week and there didn’t seem to be a lot of interest. However, when I taught them, they loved it. They got very excited about the whole gambling thing.





They set up the place really well, with green tablecloths on the poker tables. We had 8 tables, one for each class, with the teachers acting as dealers. The winner from each table went on to play in the final, with proper poker chips! All the students were really fixated with the whole thing. In the end, it came down to 2 guys, both students from my main classes (G1 class and G2 class). Here’s Kong from G2 looking cool as a cucumber.







In the end, Ralf from G1 had more money, so bullied Kong out of the game. The prize was Southern fried Chicken (like KFC), which the G2 class (my home class) shared with me! Sure, was a great night in all!

Have not been feeling well the last week or so. Have to get some antibiotics. Feeling better now. There is supposed to be a hill nearby (Chilgap Mountain), which might be worth checking out. However, not much time here, as we leave on Friday and between now and Friday, we'll all be very busy.

Half Done

2 weeks down and 2 to go in the Summer Camp here. The first week was a lot better than the second week. Probably for two reasons: one being that I haven’t been feeling well this last week (however I did go to the nearest town on Friday evening and got some medicine) and the other reason being that the students are getting a bit fed up. They stay up till all-hours doing homework and then turn up for class the next day half asleep! I don’t give them that much homework – it must be the other teachers! I have heard that it will hit rock-bottom next week! Good news is that it should improve in week 4, cos they are all looking forward to the farewell party and going home!

Actually, the tiredness aside, the students are in good form. They do come out with some crackers! One girl asked to go to the toilet during the class, so I let her go. While she was away, another girl was seen tapping away on her electronic dictionary and she then stuck her head up and said, “She constipation!” Obviously not one bit of shame there!

I noticed something interesting in the classrooms. On the wall of each classroom is some sort of fire-related gadget with a red light. It looks like a fire alarm. However, if you have ever seen the Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, you may notice a similarity between the HAL 9000 computer (on the right in the pic below) and the fire thingy in our hotel (on the left). Hmmmm, what’s going on there…?

Irish Dancing Hits Korea

OK, so week one out of four is over! I have to say, I have really enjoyed it. I didn’t think I’d be saying that! We have to work very hard but it is rewarding. I am teaching Business English and Business oral English to classes G1 and G2, which are the classes with the lowest English level. There are only ten people in each class, so I can get to know the students a lot more and actually help the more and see them progress. At the start, some were very shy and lacking in confidence but I think they are gradually coming out of their shells. I also teach CV writing/interview skills/presentation skills to classes G3 and G4. I have found that the students are really nice, friendly and eager to learn. That makes the job a lot nicer. We are all one big happy family here!

We had to organise a 2 hour “ice-breaker” session the other evening. There are five Irish people teaching in the camp so we came up with the idea of teaching them an Irish dance. When we were in secondary school, we were all sent off to the Gaeltacht (summer camp for learning the Irish language). Every night we would have a ceili, where we had to do Irish dancing. Well, why not do it here as well (for one night only).

The most famous dance we learned was Ballai Luimni (The Walls of Limerick), where you dance with a partner and face another pair. Step in and out and so on. It’s all good fun. Here is the vid of us all making eejits of ourselves. I think Michael Flatley doesn’t need to worry too much…..



The funny thing was that the students were so shy to ask the opposite sex to dance. We picked 12 guys first and told them they each had to ask a girl to dance. “Off you go”, we said and nothing. They stood there in terror, like statues! We did eventually manage to get them to pick a girl each. They did enjoy it I think. ‘Twas good craic indeed! Hope we can do it again!

Technical Hitch

This site was down for a few days.

Turns out that my domain name (greatblogofchina.com) expired. The domain name company had been mailing me about it, but they were sending mails to an old email address, which had become blocked up with spam, so I never saw the expiration notices.

Sorry for the inconvenience.