English Summer Camp

One part of my job for the summer is to work at  3 day long English Language Summer Camp. There were 50 high school students from all around the Fukui City/Sakai/Ono City Area. The camp also included many JTE's and ALT's from the area, around 10 international university students, and 10 high school students on exchange from Fullerton, California.

There are so many wonderful stories and moments I'd like to write down that I'm struggling with where to begin.

At the beginning of the camp, I was picked up by bus at my base school with 3 of my future students. There were a few students from Mikuni on the bus already. Between the 7 of us the students were very shy and nervous about speaking to me. We did the introduction thing, talked about where I was from, and what club they were in. Once we had exhausted those topics, the students were very reluctant to keep speaking to me in English. It was obviously uncomfortable for them.

Once we got to the camp we were assigned groups that would be our team for the week. By the end of the week the students were so comfortable, not only with each other, but also with the ALT's that they tried to speak in English and were unafraid of mistakes. It was also a great time to get to know a lot of the older ALT's. I had a blast. I wish all 50 students were Kanazu kids however, I know there will be some awesome kids at Kanazu as well.

View from the second floor.

TOP 5:

5. During the bus ride home everyone was exhausted and there wasn't much chatting. There were a few odd comments here and there but for the most part everyone dozed off. However, when I got up to get off the bus, the boys from Mikuni made sure to wake up enough to say, "Erin! Erin!" When I turned around they all told me, "Thank you!" multiple times. A very sweet moment.

4. Newspaper. Yeah, they wrote about our camp in the newspaper and guess whose group was pictured! It's only like the side of my head in the bottom left corner but still pretty cool.

3. Japanese Food. Every meal was provided for us by the facility we stayed at. That means there was a lot of rice and miso soup but, there was also Japanese curry, squid, pickled veggies, sweet and sour chicken, tea, tofu, and a lot of struggling with chop sticks by me. Every meal I think I said, "What's this?" about 5 times. Also the kids are in charge of serving their own lunch and all of the cleanup. pretty cool.

2. ONSEN! I have finally had my first onsen experience. The facility the camp took place in was a very traditional Japanese place. The baths and showers were all public. Now this might seem horrible to many of you reading this, but I quite enjoyed it. Because, after you finish your shower there is a nice large pool of hot water waiting for you to sit and relax in. Basically every shower was accompanied by relaxation time in a spa. Not a bad deal.

1. One of the cultural activities that we played made the kids stand up and say what each english speaking country is famous for. All of the American ideas were pretty standard. Things like; hamburgers, statue of liberty, Grand Canyon etc... However, one student stood up and said, FAT. All of the americans in the room burst out laughing. It was pretty hysterical.


Alright, now I'm off the get ready for the Mikuni Fireworks festival. Hope that was comprehensible because I don't have time to proof read...