dear winter camp...

Blow me.

I could just end this here, but, I don't have a penis, and, also, winter camp is an idea, and not something capable of blowing me, if I did have a penis, as it were.

This statement still expresses the particular sentiment, however.

Let me just bring up what my summer camps were like last semester.  Summer camp A ended up being a light disaster.  I wasn't given much time to prepare, and then, everything I did prepare--every painstakingly crafted worksheet and workbook, each set of questions for the movies we were going to watch, each story that I wrote for the story a day project... everything--was all trashed after about half a day of camp.  Why?  Welllllll... my school decided that my summer camp, all two weeks of it, would be with the same 30 or so kids, all with lower than average English speaking abilities.  See: none.  I was supposed to have a co-teacher help me with the camp, someone to be there and translate and help explain stuff to the kids so that I could easier facilitate a class and have them understand what we were doing.  The education office decided that they would not pay for me to have a co-teacher about three days before camp was to begin.

I was left adrift with thirty kids who could only say "hello, teacher" for two weeks.

Everything that I had planned and made for eight hours a day for two weeks became absolutely useless.  Everything that I was so proud of could no longer be done, because there was no one to help explain it.  Believe me, I tried to do it on my own, but all the kids kept saying was "Teacher, moobie?  Teacher, moobie?!  Teacher, what doing??  Moobie?!"  GAAAHHHHHHHH.  Okay, so, the crafts that I bought all of the supplies for still worked out, and they had a lot of fun with that... but this was ENGLISH camp, not "let's do crafts while Tara Teacher cries a little at how much of a summer camp failure she is and drinks soju under the desk" camp.

Needless to say, it was a long ass two weeks.  During which, I also had to deal with the breakup of me and my lying, cheating, abusive, evil incarnate ex-boyfriend (a story for another time).  Worst.summer.ever.  I then had two weeks of vacation to look forward to, another disaster summer camp, and one week off before starting my second semester.

The second summer camp was supposed to be a breeze.  It was supposed to be a week long, and everything was supposed to have been done for us.  We were just supposed to come in and be able to teach with everything in front of us.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Now that I've regained my composure... notice how every sentence I just mentioned had "supposed to" in it.  That's because everything we were told was total bullshit.  Nothing was planned, nothing was done for us, and no one really cared to help.  We went in blind with a weak excuse for ideas on what to do for our summer camp.  Essentially, we planned everything the night before, or the day of, and just did it all that way.  So, really, all three weeks in total of summer camps that I did were planned the second I was doing them.  Go ahead and pretend that it was fun and not stressful at all, it makes you all LIARS!

My winter camp is shaping up to be about the same.  I kept asking what was going on, and didn't get an answer until early this week.  I was told that I would have a four week winter camp, instead of the regular two week winter camp, and that I would be teaching at three different schools.

That was it.

DELIGHTFUL!

Then, I was asked to attend a meeting on Tuesday... which got moved to Thursday, and no one thought of telling me until I was panicking that I was going to be late for my meeting.  Thanks, co-teachers, for being so on the ball.  The meeting was even more confusing.  I don't know what it is about organizing camps here, but it seems as though no organization is put into it at all.  We were asked to pick three different topics that we would teach about--I chose art, fashion, and food and cooking, the boys are going to LOVE my class--and then we would rotate between the three school for three weeks teaching our three units.  It seemed simple enough, and I was happy with that.  BUT OH NO, why be simple, when you could throw a thousand tiny wrenches in the works.  Suddenly, we're at our home schools for nine days of the camp, and at the other schools for three days each.  Okay... so... are we teaching the same three units but stretching it out for nine days at our home schools?  OF COURSE NOT.  No, our three units suddenly turned into nine units, and being at our home schools for the first week, then the first two days of the second week, then a different school for the last three days of the second week, then back at our schools for the first two days of the third week, then at a different school for the last three days of the third week, and then doing some sort of sports day, outside, in the winter, for five hours, on the SATURDAY(!!!!) of the third week.  SO OBVIOUS, right?

Thanks for keeping it simple, Korea.

Bah humbug.

Either way, things are STILL(???!!!) in the works.  Joy of joys.  So, it might all change, yet again.  I basically want to curl up and sleep for nine or ten weeks instead of doing this camp.

On an entirely sad note, it was the drama teacher's last day today.  I'm going to miss her so much, I almost started crying when we said goodbye.  I teared up, but I sucked it up... thank goodness, crying in front of Koreans is really awkward.  I'm hoping to go up to Seoul before I leave, so, if I do, I can see her one last time.  Sad time city.  It's making me realize that I'm going to be leaving ALL of these people behind in two and a half months, people that I have come to love and care about so much.  I'm going to bawl my eyes out for days.  I'm happy to be going home to my friends and family in Canada, but, I'll most likely never see most of these people ever again, and it breaks my heart into a million little pieces.

Anyways, enough of this sadness, I'm going to make myself cry, and it'll be ridiculous... me in my little one room apartment crying to myself while watching Friends.  I WON'T DO IT!

I should get going, and maybe take a nap before meeting Alex for din dins.

Toodles <3