Murasakino English Summer Seminar

Front Row: Left to right: Haruka Mori, Kurumi Matsui, Ayana Nakanishi, Ayumi Wada. Back Row: Left to right: Yusuke Miyajima, Egor Bakuon, and Chris (me)

For the past three days I have lived with this 6 high school kids at their 2005 English Summer Seminar Camp. Technically my lessons are done but because we’re on salary we still need to go to work when there are no students. But it just so happened that I got the opportunity to help out with the English camp this year. The job maybe a little tiring but we were given and expense allowance and three compensatory vacation days. It was a very interesting experience to be with high school kids for a change. For this past year I have been teaching elementary school kids and even a few junior high kids and in my eyes they are just that… kids. They are all full of energy, wonder, and some rebelliousness. So when I went to this camp with high school students I was expecting to have intelligent conversations or not so “intelligent conversations”, good times, and general a fun time. How wrong was I when I went and they were just as childish as my elementary and junior high students? I couldn’t believe how old I felt these past three days. I’m only 24, but when you compare my age to the high school kids’ it’s a whole decade apart. I felt so old… on that note HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my buddy JAKE who is now 25 years old. Omedetou gozaimasu!

The camp was pretty intense that all the students had to sign a contract saying that they would not speak Japanese until the camp was officially over. They aren’t exactly the best English speakers but they did do their best. It was really hard not to use the Japanese that I know little of. There were so many occasions when I could’ve stopped 5 minutes of gesturing and pantomimes with a simple Japanese sentence. The first day we had a cooking competition where my group made okonomiyaki. First of all okonimiyaki doesn’t really work on an open camp fire-esque stove. And when they made our lunch it didn’t exactly taste… great. But I was really proud of the group for trying their best and serving a stranger they had just meet an hour ago.

The main purpose of the camp was the help the students get used to hearing and using English. The group will be going to Australia for abroad studies during their next term. So the time at camp was used to practice English and prepare for situations that might come up during their home-stay. We did things like, how to ask for directions, how to talk to your host family during meals, asking for favors, and etc. The camp had about 40 kids, 30 of them girls and 10 of them boys. The group was really good as far as enthusiasm goes and very motivated to learn. I mean you did have a few people that weren’t really into it but the majority did very well. I had a really funny guy in my group named Egor Bakoun. He’s a Russian kid that moved to Japan a few years ago. His English was a lot better than most of the students in the camp but his main problem was that he didn’t have tact. Sometimes he would say things that were really blunt that would offend people. But he now how to apologize and recognized that he does have a problem of being tactful. It was really funny when he would use his Russian accent and shoot someone down. All in all the camp was fun. Hey, I got paid and fee vacation days.

Krystal is still away at least for another week. Everyone seems to be really concerned with me and not whether I would be lonely or bored but whether or not I will be eating. Everyone I talked to would say, “so are you eating ok? Can you cook your won meals?” I mean people, I may not be a cook but I will not starve when it comes down to it. Just last week I had to make two dinners for myself and I thought that it came out ok. One night I made hamburger patties with cream and mushroom sauce. The other night I made garlic pepper chicken which came out really good. So what should go on this week’s menu? I don’t hopefully something easy like pasta or maybe some pork chops? It is a little boring though…

Well tomorrow will be an easy day at the office, no lessons tomorrow. Maybe I can find some time to put up more pictures. Until later…

Boogie on Down!