I'm melting

Koreans love to tell you about how they have four seasons in Korea. I'm not going to dispute that; however, I am going to disagree with the names of the seasons. According to Koreans, their four seasons are: spring, summer, fall, winter. I'm going to counter this claim with my own names for the seasons I have experienced here: rainy, humid, chilly, and freezing. As we get towards the end of July and beginning of August, it has become insanely hot. I hesitate to use the word "scorching" as that implies a dry, oven heat and dry heat, as my Midwestern readers know, is not the true Beelzebub of summer heat - it's humidity.

Yes, we have humidity back home. However, in true Korean fashion, the very climate itself is trying to one-up everyone. The humidity here is nothing short of outrageous. It's currently 11:17pm and the temperature is 74 degrees with 95% humidity. If this was occasionally, then I could handle it, but it's every day! So. Much. Humidity.

The biggest problem is that Koreans don't use air conditioning. Seriously, at camp today we didn't have the AC on for the first hour or so, and it must have been upwards of 90 degrees. I was sweating through my shirt simply standing there doing nothing. FINALLY we turned it on and then the kids whined about being cold.

I had my first day of the Buyeo Office of Education camp. This is my last week of teaching elementary school, so that's exciting. In standard fashion, it was Sunday night and I still had only the vaguest idea of what to expect for camp. I had my lessons prepared, but I didn't have a timetable and I didn't have any clue what to expect as far as setup. Whatever, at this point I'm barely fazed by any of that.

Basically, the Office of Education takes several fifth or sixth grade students from each elementary school and puts them in this camp. That's really all the background you need on the event.

My co-teacher (a woman that I only met recently - we got paired for this event, she's super nice) and I found ourselves in charge of a "homeroom" class of about 14 sixth graders. I had two of my students in it, actually, so that was cool. Upon receiving my timetable at the start of the day, my CT and I were slightly dismayed to realize that it instructed us to have "icebreaker games and orientation" for 40 minutes. Well, I would have prepared such games if anyone had bothered to tell us that part of camp would a) include a "homeroom" class and b) there would be time for icebreakers. It was okay though - I had a name game where you just stand in a circle and say your name with an action, then the person next to has to say your name, do your action, then make up their own. It's one long chain.

Simply put, I thought I would have the hardest time memorizing 14 Korean kids names, especially since they typically opt to speak at a decibel level only slightly above inaudible. Getting these kids to do the barest of actions and speaking up was like speed-reading War and Peace, only harder. Bless my students though, they were the loudest.

Needless to say, I memorized all names before anyone else because well, I was the only person trying (my CT got them too). Later we played another name game (in Korean, despite this being English camp) and it was a rhythmic clapping and passing the names to other people, so of course every student knew MY name and thought it was sooooo funny to pass to me. Hahaha, too bad for them I easily mastered it and showed them who was boss.

Four days of camp left. On Friday we have to do a "presentation" and my CT wants the kids to sing "Summer Lovin" from Grease. While this is a fun song, it feels slightly inappropriate to teach sixth graders "she got friendly, down in the sand... we made out under the dock." Also today I had to sing it a capella and solo, though luckily no one laughed at me. Though after almost a year of elementary school teaching, singing in the classroom really isn't that big of a deal any more. Now I have to go devise a dance to this song. Lucky me.