The Deal with Winter Camp and Desk Warming

Winter Camp

Winter English Camp is a camp during winter vacation that most public school teachers are required to teach.  Depending on your school, it can range from a few days to a few weeks.  During the rest of the school holiday, English public school teachers are still required to come in, even though there are no classes and no other teachers.  We affectionately call this time "Desk Warming."

Winter Camp is entirely in the hands of the English teacher.  (Or, most are.)  I was the one who planned it and taught it.  It runs from 8:30-12:30, with the afternoons free for planning.  Mine was set up so that 9:00-9:40 was 1st/2nd grade for two weeks, and 9:50-12:10 was 3/4th grade for the first week and 5th/6th grade for the second week.  I had 18 or so 1/2nd graders, around nine 3/4th graders, and two 5/6th graders.  Yes, two.  (Six signed up, and three came the last day). 

From what I can tell, the school doesn't actually expect the kids to greatly improve their English at Winter Camp.  It's more about having fun doing silly activities and reviewing/picking up some new vocab along the way.  Initially (before Summer Camp) I had been excited for the camps to teach new grammar and subjects outside the book, but I quickly learned that the kids are in vacation mode.  Oh, and they don't particularly care about English.  Did you care about High School Spanish?

Supplies

My school has a pretty good English budget, and they offered us a few hundred thousand won (a few hundred dollars) for Winter Camp supplies.  I made a list of what I would need for the activities, my co-teacher got the list approved, and we went shopping together with a school credit card.

Some schools have really low budgets, and every school is slightly different in their approach.

My supplies included colored paper for projects, tape, balloons, cookie ingredients, etc.

Ideas for Winter Camp

Waygook.com will save your life.  Really.  It's a site where ESL teachers in Korea upload lesson plans, games, ideas, and other materials (crosswords, worksheets, etc.)  It has forums for different themed Winter Camps: Harry Potter, Space Camp, Olympics, etc. and they are filled with really useful material. 

For 1st and 2nd grade, I did a simple craft/art project about very basic vocabulary every period.  For example, we learned some weather vocabulary, colored umbrella top cutouts, and taped them to chopsticks.   

3+4th and 5th+6th I was able to get more advanced.  We learned English songs -- I printed out the lyrics with a bunch of words removed for them to fill in -- and made/ painted paper mache heads, played review games, watched Elf, did an Egg Drop, and made no-bake cookies.

Ideas that flopped:

1) Making a music video.  This might have worked if my kids were all outgoing/dancy/enthused about memorizing an English song.  They weren't. I have some pretty terrible footage of a few kids mouthing "Love me do."  Lots of blooper footage.  Maybe I can make a blooper movie and add the real bits at the end. 

2) Learning feelings, writing them in the snow and taking pictures.  Also, snow angels.  The kids had zero desire to go outside "Teacher! COLD!", which was understandable -- most of them had no hats or gloves.  (Dear parents...). 

Also, in spite of showing an inspiring Youtube video about how to make snow angels, my kids weren't enthused about trying them out.  Except one boy who ran ahead, stopped still, and then flung himself face-forward into the snow, flailing his body around.  It was beautiful.

3) S'mores.  This wasn't my idea, nor is it my story, but it makes me laugh so I will share it.  My friend Asrune has a tumultuous (read: bizarre/insane) relationship with her co-teacher.  Asrune sat down with her before camp to go over the supplies that the co-teacher would need to get for the Winter camp.

They discussed s'more ingredients for about 20 minutes, with Asrune explaining very carefully what a s'more was, and giving her a list of optional types of chocolate, graham crackers/biscuits, and marshmellows.

When Asrune returned from vacation to start winter camp, she looked at the s'more ingredients that had been supplied.  Well, actually, she didn't know they were s'more ingredients because they were so off-base -- she assumed they were random snack foods.  Here is a breakdown of her co-teacher's s'more ingredient interpretation:

Graham crackers became: Ritz cracker cheese sandwiches. 
Plain chocolate bars became: chocolate candy bars
And the topper -- Marshmellows became: MINI SAUSAGES.

What? 

Yes.  She couldn't find marshmellows and thought that mini sausages would be an appropriate substitute. 

Desk Warming

There are a ton of complaints about desk warming because it seems pointless and inefficient, and other teachers have the vacation days off.

I kind of enjoy it.  They're paying me to relax in a warm (oh yes, the heater is on when I'm here alone) room with internet access, a phone and a fridge.  Nobody checks up on me, and I have no work to do.  Which means I get to blog, read, write, take care of emails, make phone calls, Skype, and watch Community.  Which is so.amazing.love.

When camp ended last week, the kids whined and asked if they could visit me this week.  I gave them an hour on Monday and Tuesday.  I have no idea if I'm breaking laws, but I assume I'm not.  Today they came in and we watched K-pop music videos.

Kpop is the Korean pop music genre.  It consists of a million all-boy and all--girl pop groups that have around eight people with the same height, body, and face (they change up hair colors).  The girls are really cutesy with long hair, big eyes, and scaryscarytiny little waists.  The boys are the same, but with shorter hair and angstier expressions.  They mostly sing about relationships, from what I can tell of the English phrases thrown in (Girl, you're my caffeine; so I love you, so I hate you...)

They've got some catchy songs.  It's pop.  Here's a Girl's Generation video called "I have a boy." 

    

 One of the extremely popular boy bands is called Beast.  (Which has made for some fun English lessons: "No, not I want to meet the Beast.  Just Beast.)  Here is their song Bad Girl.

One of my kids spazzed out when showing me a video of them.  "Handsome!  Ohhhh!"  She turned to me and pointed at the screen.  "Handsome?"

I shrugged.  "They're so little."

"What?"

"Uh.  Baby.  Baby."  I made baby rocking gestures and pointed at Beast.

"Teacher, no!  No baby!"

"Yes!"  And then I told her I was 66.  She freaked out and started jabbering to her friend who also freaked out.  They pulled up Google Translate and typed in "How old are you?"

I repeated 66, and translated "Plastic Surgery."

"???"  They pointed at my face.  I pointed at my eyes, nose, chin, and then made a waving motion over my body.

One of them typed some Korean into Google Translate.  "66, huh?"  Not a bad translation.

And then.  "Her face is 20."

I laughed.   "Thank you." 

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Adaptibility, the good, the bad, and the pretty

Throughout high school, my class was told -- as every class should be -- that we were bright, capable, full of potential, and the future was not simply in our hands; it was us.  We were also told that we were special because we had grown up overseas and had a sense of the changing world, of cultural interactions, of adaptability.  Highly adaptable, they told us.  Highly adaptable from the moving, the transitioning, the juggling of culture and language and family and streams of friends passing through. 

I've been thinking about adaptability lately, or rather, I've been thinking about what it often comes hand-in-hand with -- getting used to situations.

"Man is a creature who can get used to anything, and I believe that is the very best way of defining him."

Dostoevsky would have our adaptability define us -- not just TCKs, but everyone -- and I think few would argue that it isn't an essential part of our nature.

Pauline Chen, a surgeon, lends an interesting perspective, describing the first time she made an incision on human flesh:

Like doctors-in-training before and after me, I wrapped my fingers around the handle in a kind of death grip and winced as the belly of the blade touched the patient’s body. And as much as I’d like not to admit it, my hand shook, so great was my fear of pushing too hard and slicing too deep.   

She says this is a common initial reaction for surgeons, but that after years of practice, "cutting began to feel second nature to me, the scalpel merely an extension of my fingers."

It's a slightly disturbing idea, isn't it: Getting used to cutting live human skin.  The cringe aspect was purposeful, as she continues her article with a discussion of why the public is relaxing about goverment atrocities.  Man can get used to anything.  

Adaptibility.  On one hand, there are people adapting and thriving in new, difficult environments.  On the other, there are people becoming complacent about problems that once horrified; shrugging about distant violence, accepting with a blink the pictures of swollen stomached children that once at least stirred us enough to click the Donate Now button. 

It's a coping mechanism, a defense mechanism, an evolutionary reality, an unbelievable asset, problematic in addictions (as we adapt to our input and crave more drugs, alocohol, porn, food, power), and depressing when resultant in complacency.

Perhaps I'm using the wrong word.  Perhaps getting used to violence and thriving in a new environment shouldn't be accredited to the same source.  I don't know.

**

"I've grown accustomed to her face..."

I take things for granted.  I have to, in order to perform as a functional human.  If I were constantly thinking about how amazing my body is (wait for it), with the blood rushing, and the synapses sparking, and the nerves doing their signal sending spiel -- I wouldn't get anything done.

There's a Ted Talks about falling in love, and how the world would be a scary, awful place if the infatuation period were permanent.  Well, not scary and awful so much as unproductive.  Nobody would get anything done.  They would be writing crappy songs and driving miles to find rare flowers and spending all their money on trinkets and failing any exam or work problem that required mental energy.  OK, maybe not exactly like that...

In the same way that you have to release aspects of the puppy love phase, you also have to release constant appreciation of the wonder of the world (which you once had.  really.  watch a baby or a little kid for a while...or read Calvin and Hobbes).  The sun and the stars and the ocean and mountains and flowers and animals (animals!) and how it all fits so perfectly...you can't walk around thinking and talking about it all the time.  Socially, that doesn't work so well -- like Adam, the Asperger's title character of Adam, who strikes up intense and lengthly conversations about the Solar System as part of small talk. 

So instead of marveling over it, I live in it.  And, probably, if I were from some awful, dirty, frigid planet and came to ours, I would greatly appreciate Earth for...oh a couple months.  And then it would be routine. 

**

My point...Let's go back to the love analogy.  Sure, puppy love ends (supposedly lasts up to two years though?), but that doesn't mean you have to lose an overall sense of appreciation for the one you're with -- you don't lose the love, just the puppy.  (That didn't work...)  But sometimes it takes intentionality...rekindling the sense of awe at the beauty and craziness that we see, eat, breathe, touch...

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Ring out, wild bells

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. "

--Tennyson



On New Year's Eve, one of Sweden's traditions is a Swedish reading of Tennyson's poem, In Memoriam, on national TV.  It's the ideal New Year poem; ringing bells to beckon in the good, flush out the bad, and give cause to hope.

2012 was an eventful year for me. I visited three new countries, moved to Korea, spent hours lost on busses and subways, made great friends, changed jobs, said goodbye to new friends, explored a foreign culture, got bruised from kickball, took on too many languages, ate jellyfish legs, learned yoga, got a cat, saw two babies come into the world via Facebook (no, not live), discovered that I can almost deal with cold weather, learned new recipes, made friends online, taught my kids to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, joined a band, got a smartphone, cut my own hair (x2), bought clothes without trying them on, survived a typhoon, discovered tights, joined a writer's group, went to a mud festival, calmed way down about flying, experienced a New Moon party on a beach in Thailand, celebrated the New Year in Hong Kong, got into Ted Talks, developed an English/Korean/hand gesture language with my co-teacher, ate a lot of pasta and banana milk shakes, and turned a quarter of a century old.

I almost wish I had numbers for you: the average amount of times I have return to my apartment because I've forgotten something, the amount of pounds of rice I've eaten in Korea, the number of bus rides I've taken, the number of times per day that I bow in greeting or thanks, the number of photos I've taken, of times I've told my kids to speak English, of shrugs I've made when people have commented on my weight, of impromptu songs sung with Asrune, of times I've tried to explain where I'm from...

The desire to quantify is simply the journalist in me who I can never quite stomp down -- always support with authority and numbers.  In this case, it's better to leave things nebulous; the best things in life can't be quantified.  (Seriously, Bhutan. with your index of happiness).

**

This year I shall say goodbye to my two homes of the past few years; my family's elegant apartment in Ostermalm, and my own little studio in Bongilcheon.  There is always a sadness and nostalgia surrounding goodbyes, but in this case, there is also great anticipation for the future.  Future adventures, locations, ideas, loves, books, foods, stories.  Stories.  My own and others.

Strandvagen, Stockholm

Seoul

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