The Next Step In My Grand Adventure!

Man, I haven’t written in a long while! Sorries, I meant to keep writing, but after that bed and breakfast place, we went to a place with limited net access with one shared lappy between all 20 of us with camps in between so we couldn’t use it, especially with the campers around. Anywho, that last place I was at? Well, the place was great! But the campers were another thing. There were six campers for each of us ACs (american counselors) and the students totaled about 130, more or less.

I’ve got to say, this was probably my worst group yet and I strongly disliked my batch of kids this time around. There are four groups whom we work with: the first group is our Program Orientation Group where we introduce ourselves to the kids and help them make name tags, a group name and whom we talk with for Group Discussion, the second is our One Minute Drill Group whom we help memorize english sentences and then we time them to see how many sentences they can remember and say in one minute, the third is our My Story Group whom we help them write in english about themselves and a topic of their choice and last but not least, the fourth group, our Camp Skit Group, who we help in writing a skit for the group to do all in english.

Unfortunately, this time around, I really didn’t like the kids I worked with. We had cramp classrooms, loud noises from the many students and many distractions, once again to the many students. My students wouldn’t talk to me and though I tried, they kept to themselves and I had to intervene each time to check their grammar and spelling and I must say, it sucked ass! I have never been so frustrated in my whole life when working with kids. Granted, they spoke little english and were more comfortable speaking japanese, but come on! This is English Summer Camp!!! I wanted to wring their necks!...

Anywho, evil thoughts aside, they weren’t my best group. To top it off, they were our first group who were allowed to use their english dictionaries, be they electronic or good old fashion paperback, they used them like there was no tomorrow and it interfered greatly with my correcting their english. I’ve never seen so much wrong grammar and wrong word usage. They tried to get away with it, but I had to correct them each time and explained to them why certain words didn’t work or what the hell they were talking about!

Anywho, despite all the anger and frustration I bore towards them, I felt really bad when at the end, all 130 (more or less) students ending up singing a song in gratitude of us helping them on their english. It was really... good. Good enough to make me cry, and hell did I cry! I bawled like a baby, well, not as loud, but the waterworks was there. I recorded a little snippet of them singing, but I wished I would have kept recording cause if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have ending up crying like an idiot.

Ok, tears aside, that camp went and finished and we went to another part in Nagano and ended up there for the next four-ish or five camps, so we were there for almost three weeks. I think we pissed off the owner because we requested a lot of her and did a lot of stupid things. Aside from that, all the other ACs were using the lappy like mad fiends and we were only allowed 10 minutes on it at a time and it gave me little to no time in writing in the blog. Anyway, these next camps did well. I liked them a lot. The last couple of camps, I danced my ass off. Yes, we have dance parties for the students and campfires too. I have never danced so much in my whole life and sweated like a pig. Mmm... Sounds sexy doesn’t it? Lol.

When we finished the last camp, we went to our next homestay and will be here for ten days. I can’t even remember or count the days. I have to keep asking my host family. They’re a little weird and despite my host mom being an english teacher, her english kinda sucks. Lol. Well, at least she knows english, some, but she’s really nice and her family’s pretty cool. Hell, they’re as cool as cool can be, cause they went out and bought Lauren and me yukatas! (Lauren is one of the ACs and is in the homestay with me) Yukatas are summer kimonos and are lighter than actual kimonos. They’re on sale now, but are still friggin expensive! They’re close to $100 in american dollars! We both felt really bad about it, but they said it was their present to us cause we gave them our presents that we brought with us from america.

Blah, anywho, since our homestay here, we’ve been going out and about with our other teammate Ma Lee, who’s staying with a host family who is good friends with ours. We’ve gone to the beach, gone shopping at a premium outlet mall (and the clothes are still f-in expensive!) with two of our JCs who are done with us and are heading back to school, gone shopping at a mall for a short period of time, gone shopping at a 100 yen store (in which many of you who may be reading this will be getting your presents from me from, but they have some pretty good stuff there, better than american one dollar stores!), gone to a japanese cemetary to honor our host family’s ancestors, gone to Atsuta Temple, took pictures with Lauren and Ma Lee at cool japanese pictures-taking machines in which we can add cute stuff to, gone to the Nagoya Aquarium (which has a killer dolphin show! Too bad we couldn’t stay for the whale show and the place is f-in crowded!) And will be going to see Inuyama Castle tomorrow. It may seem like we’ve done a lot, but I don’t feel like we’ve done much.

Now in terms of going places and doing stuff, I forgot to mention that during one of our prep days for camps (free day to get ready for camp) we went to Matsumoto City and hung out there: shopping, visiting Matsumoto Castle and karaoke-ing. It was a lot of fun! Also, the day before that, we went to a festival that celebrated the victory of a shogun in the past who lived in that area and warded off another shogun from invading the land there by putting torches on his cattle at night, making it seem like he had more soldiers that the other shogun anticipated and therefore, saved the area from being attacked. It was a small festival, but was cool. We even danced too! Well, that was cause this one guy gave us free stuff, but only if we would dance too and it was pretty cool. We made one full round and then stopped, but it was good. They sang and it was kinda pretty... even though it was old men who sang it.

The other day, my friend Chou had me look up a singer and I've been hooked on him since. Khalil Fong. That dude has suck a nice voice! (Anson Hu still rocks, but I'll give this time some time, maybe he can do me in. lol) I also hope I lost some weight, though I highly doubt it. I might have gained some cause they keep grilling everytime we eat and they keep feeding us like they're trying to fatten us up for a barbeque or something. I don't usually eat three meals a day and like I said, they feed us till we're about to burst! but the food is really good! and HEALTHY!!!! (I think I wanna make yakisoba when I get back home... though I'm craving for hmong food really badly!!!!)

Man, it’s kinda sucks. I’m really enjoying Japan, but the days grow shorter and before you know it, I’ll be heading back to denver (ARGH!) And then back home to buy my school books and back to school and in need of another job... DAMN!!!!!!

Oh yeah, I also heard about the bridge on 35W collaspsing. It's pretty sad stuff. I was really scared that my brother was on it, but he was at Phalen Park so he was ok, but I feel sad for the people who died on it. My heart goes out to the familes who lost their loved ones...