Last month it was time for English camp 2013 at the high school where we teach. It's quite funny that it had to be called 2013 when it's already 2014. The academic affairs office wouldn't let them call it 2014 because it's the 2013 school year. The year started in May of 2013 and ended this month of 2014 so it's the 2013 school year. We learn something new every day. When the head teacher declared the English camp open all of the foreigners thought it was an error, but we were the ones in error. I'm sure everyone else understood perfectly although Rusty told me later that the teachers wanted to say 2014. :)
Rusty and I had the reading section. We also were the sponsors for the orange team. The theme for the camp was Love in ASEAN. People everywhere are caught up in the excitement of ASEAN becoming a reality in 2015 so we all have to help the students improve their English skills and learn facts about the other nine countries that will be part of the ASEAN family. Rusty and I have worked extra hours to help fellow teachers with their ASEAN projects so preparing reading materials about each country turned out to be quite easy. We have edited and recorded numerous informative readings about each of the member nations; I probably could have written the articles for our activity without any further research. But I still did more research, and now I want to go visit most of them!
We were outside under the trees working at outdoor tables which turned out to be a good blessing. Students were able to work with their partners looking for fun facts and learn new vocabulary words about each of the countries.
In the afternoon we had two hours to get ready for the Mr. and Miss English contest as well as the skit and cheer competitions. Our team representatives are on the left in the above picture--Mr. Singapore and Miss Viet Nam. They did a good job although we didn't know when they entered the Mr. contest that that would remove them from our skit and cheer teams, but our team did a great job overcoming the loss of our two best English speakers. We didn't know they couldn't participate with us so they had major parts in the skit and had to have substitutes at the last minute.
Our team did a great job even though we didn't win the overall competition. I still think we were robbed! Of course I'm a bit partial. After all, they're my kids. I know we had the best cheer, and our kids did all of the work on their skit themselves from choosing which story to act out to what actions and what props they were going to use. They took the materials provided for stage props and did a great job. We'll get 'em next year!
They had some new songs this year. A new teacher was in charge of the English camp, and Rusty and I really enjoyed the fresh ideas she brought. We'll enjoy using some of them in our summer camp in Isaan. I think this teacher must have gone to another English camp where some Christians helped out. What do you think? Do you recognize the tune?
The kids really enjoyed this one, and we're definitely going to keep it around for a crowd pleaser. We worked with Pawn on it, and she enjoyed it too.
See what I mean about a great cheer?!?! Seriously, it was pretty hard coming up with cheers about Singapore and Viet Nam. Each team had two different countries. Usually cheer competitions are huge here so I really didn't feel that we were up to the task. OK. I really had a stinky attitude about it thinking that if the westerners were in charge of it, it wouldn't be much fun. But I was wrong. The kids had sort of forgotten the cheer by the time we performed, or maybe it was a case of stage fright. But they still did a good job, and I declared our team winners for the outstanding work they put in. Overall this was probably one of my favorite English camps.
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