English Camp

On Saturday, we had the pleasure of a 13-hour day at children's English Camp for Yr 3-6 students, unpaid. Actually, despite a little initial scepticism, it really was a great day. It was raining on and off, which made it a little challenging, as we had to update our plans several times based on the weather, but in the end it worked out pretty well. To be honest, we only had the barest of plans beforehand, so changing it up was very little hardship.

Some highlights of the day included a game of Crocodile Crocodile (hopping instead of running due to limited space), Body ABC (what it sounds like, forming the various letters of the alphabet with one's body), and musical statues, done as various animals.

In the evening, the kids cooked a dinner of curry and rice for everybody. Watching the kids chop vegetables was a little hair-raising, there really is no such thing as Workplace Health and Safety, or Risk Assessments here. Hand the kids knives, and tell them to get chopping. However, despite a few cringe moments, we were served a pretty good curry, and I had no recognisable body parts in my serving.


Over the course of the day, we made friends with a lot of the kids, mostly girls, who were incredibly sweet and friendly. There really is something very special about a kid coming up to you, trying to make conversation despite language difficulties, and then just slipping a warm little hand into yours and grinning at you. A particular sweetie was a little girl called Emu (pronounced Em, as in Emily, with a faint short u sound at the end). She's a student at one of Hunter's schools, but too young to be taught regularly by him, and she took a real shine to us. We tried calling her Emu, but she didn't much like it...

In the evening, they lit a big camp fire (fortunately, it had stopped raining by then), and after Andy did some really cool fire twirling, some drummers arrived on the scene. The drumming was awesome. I don't think it was traditional Japanese, there was a huge wooden xylophone involved, and it sounded really tribal. I really love that style of drums, be it African rhythms or Japanese Taiko. I think I prefer complex drumming rhythms to "real" music. Having worked with kids for the past 6 months, Hunter and I have lost many of our inhibitions, and we danced like crazy to the beat, sometimes together, sometimes with various members of our gaggle of followers. They were much more self-concious than us, but with a bit of coaxing, and a bit of just grabbing them by the hands and helping them get started, we got quite a dance party going. It was a blast! Later, we were taught a "proper" dance, and had some other fun and games.

At the end of the night, when it was time to say good-bye, the kids just didn't want to let us go. I admit to feeling a bit the same way myself. They trailed behind us up the hill as we went to get our stuff, and trailed behind us back down the hill again as we went towards the bus, calling out "bye-bye" and "see you" all the while. They kept waving after us for a long time. Somehow, in the space of a day, they wormed their way into our hearts.