Camp

The 27th through the 30th, I was grateful to be part of an English Summer Camp. During the last week and first 1-2 weeks of August is the summer break for Japanese Schools. This is a prime and good opportunity to create camps or have camps. Many students go to camps of English to further their English study and get a big chance to be in an American Culture environment and be surrounded by English Speakers and so this is a good opportunity for them. This is also a good opportunity to have fun bible stories and lessons infused into the English Camp. This Camp is an English Camp first and foremost, but we also have just as much bible teaching in English and Japanese. The food is all American, and so the kids, young adults and even adults are able to really experience a lot of the ways of what an American camp looks and even feels like.. to be honest i thought the atmosphere was very good i really felt like i was in America or at least an American camp. The first day on monday was just a meet and greet kinda of day, no teaching English lessons yet but full of songs and games and having a lot of fun. This camp was not only a spend the night camp but could also be the day camp. This camp was made to meet the needs of your schedule. Parents did not always have the time to take their children or what have you and so these made for a good opportunity for the maximum amount of people to have the opportunity for this camp. I was blessed to be an English Teacher at this camp and i was assigned to the young adults 16-30 or maybe 16-25ish.. i am not entirely sure on the ages. It was very difficult to prepare becuase i was not aware of all the ages or levels of English so i was really struggling to put something together, but finally i put what i thought would be.. enough to survive lol and move on. I had to teach 1 hour and 30 minutes lessons. And I had 4 lessons. I do not know why but it just felt like oh my goodness how can i teach for that long, i only really found out that i had taught 2 hour lessons back in the United States after the camp was over ahah.. but even though i wanted to teach well and interact well with the people, i was unsure and not worried but skeptical, yet i moved forward with confidence.. on Tuesday on the first class session i decided that we would just play games becuase i had met the students on that monday and realized very quickly that their level was a good level. advanced beginner to intermediate. They could understand you if you spoke normal to slow pace.. but learned a lot with your talking so it was really perfect... my games that i had made, i found out were not to high and not to low for them.. they might have known most of the words.. but i worked on past tense.. present tense continuous aka verb + ing and future.. they got a lot of practice on very random and different subjects.. and i picked these topics becuase not only can they practice, but you learn about them.. and it was not like a typical lesson, it was just like if we just went to hang out and we talked and i explained maybe a 10 minute lesson and then we played a game. Some might say what a ten minute less wow that snot long enough.. but in the all honesty every teacher lectures a lot.. i knew from their level immediately they understood and practice practice is most important here. And it really gave them confidence the more they spoke. The game would last around an 1 hour or 1 hour 15. In the process of each thing they said i asked the other people and then i would say what i liked or something relating to that topic.. example: all the games were board games based on each tense :past tense was like landed on a space that said "see" movie" with other things like yesterday, one month ago.. so it may look like "yesterday I saw a movie" or "yesterday I saw the movie transformers" so the whole time was English listening, hearing, using.. and we got to know each other also.. As always there were some blank stares, nervous looks, and words that ended in i dont know... but all in all there were more laughs.. and smiles then those other things and i think that is whats most important... on Tuesday they enjoyed the game sorry and some small talk.. but they started off a bit shy like most students do.. but man at the end of the camp they were really speaking a lot of English.. but not just speaking.. like loudly.. some students tend to speak a lot of English but softly and quietly.. this was the way it was in the beginning but at the end.. it was great confident. there were 6 total in our class.. the ages were 17, 17, 20,31, and Karissa the kashiwazaki intern and me. It turned out they were all girls HA, story of my life... how does it always happen.. i will never know.. it happened in h.s and in various other things... i will never know.. but i was really glad Karissa was there to help ease any nervousness... but its ok either they laughed a lot becuase they thought i was stupid or becuase they were having a good time... i don't think i really want to know. but at the end of the camp i had made friends with them. Karissa and I exchanged our email with them and hopefully we will be able to keep in touch. I think of of the most successful things was the game spoons that we taught them, they absolutely loved that game. It was a good game to play when we had free time or even during our game time in the study session.. In every study session there was a game.. and if the game didn't have much English in the game.. it was easy to add talking and communication practice during the game so that way they didn't have to think about things.. it was very surprising to me that during the game of spoons their openness went up and choppiness went way down when they spoke.. they didn't have to sit and think about it and if they did they didn't have pressure with that game.. so i thought all in all... everything really worked out a lot better than i ever thought.. It was a very good experience for me to have that environment to teach in. during the camp i was also in some ways honestly completely put on the spot to lead worship during the camp time.. Some people say that i have some good pipes.. or hey you can sing kinda deal.. but its just something im not confident but when i get really excited about something sometimes i sing in a weird voice hoping to hide my voice.. and honestly i don't know how it truly went but i answered the call from the leaders of the camp and i lead two worships songs in the campfire / marshmallow time. I did have someone play a guitar but i started off with no music.. the songs i sang were "awesome god" and "Jesus Loves me" songs that were being sung the whole camp and had motions. To be honest i don't know how it happened.. I have never known anyone to just ask a random person.. (me) who hadn't said they sang or did anything like that to just start up and sing.. it raised my suspicions on maybe someone who heard me more often said something but i will never know.. lol i did ask someone who i thought it was but all he said was "honestly i really don't know.. but you seem like a guy who likes to sing.. and hey you have a nice set of pipes" I really didn't want to say no and let them down, so of course I said,yes. I think that it was a good experience in that it broke some of the nerves off for future things and helped me become even more flexible than i ever thought i could be. I was used in a way i had never been used before and it was completely unplanned and so it showed me no matter how good or bad you think you are at something, there is always so much more we can do or be used for if we only allow our minds to think bigger and not suppress the possibilities. Following the end of the camp on Thursday around 2:00 i stayed for like an adult meeting at 6:00 -8:30 kinda like a young adult youth group, not everyone is Christian.. but people who are interested come. Keiko who was at the camp, who lives in kashiwazaki asked me if i was going to come so i decided to stay and go. This was the first time I ate somen the traditional Japanese way. Somen is like a long noodle and is eaten in like a form of broth, but it is cold and only eaten in the summer, it is really good. The traditional way is where it is run down a bamboo slide which has water in it and you have your bowl and you grab it with your chopsticks. It was a really fun thing to do. There were many people there, maybe around 14ish. 4 Chinese people were there and 4 Japanese, 6 American, the Chinese spoke Chinese and Japanese and one Chinese lady spoke a lot of English and the others could somewhat communicate in English but it was strange becuase there we were both foreigner, but using Japanese to try and communicate+ some english but mostly neither of our native tongues to try and talk lol.. The person who spoke, spoke in English and Japanese for the teaching. After that i headed home and for lunch at a farewell party from some of the students from an ECS class, it was very enjoyable and I was very thankful for the food, there was so much to eat ahah.. but that concludes my 27th-31st