The school term ended July 15th so the last two weeks of July is summer camp. As my contract is up for renewal August and I have chosen to renew, in addition to my 8 summer vacation days, I get an additional 10 days for renewing. Add to this the August 15 public holiday I now have 19 vacation days. This is overlapping into summer camp so I am only able to use 15 days and will have to carry over three vacation days to the winter holidays.

During winter camp I had to goto another school to teach camp for three days. As I have too many vacation days during the summer I only have to cover the camp at my own school and am released from having to goto any other schools.

The first week camp was four days, with no classes friday (so I got the day off), with classes ending at 12.30 (so I also get to leave at lunch). The first weeks camp was for grade 1 students only. Unfortunately they made camp mandatory so there were rowdy students disinterested easily looking for another distraction.

There was a guest foreign teacher like myself from another school sent to help in my camp (as I was supposed to goto other schools). So we each did a double lesson and switched students around for the last two classes.

I did a lesson on at the bakery, and the second class was superman so we get to see trailers from various movies and tv show adaptations and answer short questions. Most students hated the Supergirl movie trailer but one boy thought she was very pretty!.

For the bakery lesson they were supposed to practice talking to the baker and ordering items. One smart girl wasnt talking and told me she didnt want anything from the bakery. I asked why she went to the bakery so she said she went to keep cool in the A/C as it was hot outside. I told her partner to tell her to get out of her bakery!

On thursday the teachers all went for lunch at a korean restaurant, and had pajan (the large seafood pancake) and a choice of hot or cold noodle soup. I went for the warm as the noodles are fatter and the soup is nicer than the cold noodle dish.

The second weeks camp was five days again till 12.30. This time we had two different guest teachers from the school I had gone to during winter camp. This time its grades 1-3 plus some grade 6 elementary students. Also its not mandatory so the classes are more manageable sizes with motivated students but they can still get out of control after a while. We started with an opening address in the auditorium and everyone got t-shirts to wear during camp.

One of the lessons for this week was going on a blind date and some chat up lines. The boys didnt want to talk to the girls and kept saying they were gay so they could sit and talk with their friends. Then one boy and one girl had to goto the front to present the dialogue from the board.

There was a class with only 4 girls who were very shy so we couldnt do a boy/girl split. The boys kept putting their hands up wanting to be the girl. When the other student kept trying to ask them out they kept shouting 'NO' to every question and were being very a mean date!

We also had a photographer from the local Palgong newspaper show up again, like one did during winter camp. The class was on our 10 min break between lessons so we had to stage photos with me standing behind students pointing at a book, while everyone was trying to keep a straight face.

This thursday the teachers went for lunch at a new vietnamese restaurant across from the school. We ended up having Shabu Shabu which is a japanese dish where you have a boiling pot of water and put your vegetables and meat items in and cook them. You then wrap them in moistened rice paper and eat them like a wrap.

With summer camp finally over am flying home to Toronto on Saturday for two weeks to see family and friends. Then will return and head to Western China for my Xinjiang province trip in mid august.