New year's Eve!

It's currently 10:41pm December 31st 2008. I am sitting in the teacher's room for the Suncheon Winter English Camp. I am sipping bokbunjajoo (delicious raspberry wine). The rest of the foreign teachers are sitting behind me, but casual conversation is no longer enough to keep my eyes open. Although the conversation between nine exhausted foreigners can be HILARIOUS.

For example, public school teachers are allowed 26 paid vacation days in February. Public school is not in session during January either, but it is up to each school's discretion to decide if the foreigner must go to school or not. Fortunately I don't have to go for MOST of January. Just the 5-7th where I need to plan a day camp for grade three students. No biggie. NORMAN however, has to teach grade 1 and 2 students music and KOREAN LITERACY. I laughed for fourteen minutes straight.

Dean is flying his remote-control helicopter in the foyer. That also makes me smile.

This camp has been an EXPERIENCE so far. I was really scared to teach middle school students. I know how catty the students were when I was in middle school. I didn't know how I would handle adolescent students.

The first day we had to take a group of sixteen students and make a team cheer and poster. I was like 'oh Lord, I can't make a cheer! And this is EXACTLY the kind of thing I HATED to do in school'. But it was fine. And as much as they whine you can tell they enjoy it.

I am sharing a room with Ali:) We have a single bed each and a bathroom (with no tub of course, we shower all over the bathroom, the toilet and sink get soaked). The students are sharing rooms the same size as the one Ali and I are sharing. However, they have 4-7 people to a room, and no beds. They have to cuddle on the floor :S

We work our BUTTS off from 9-9. And after nine, the students are pretty much left to their own devices. At the moment the Korean teachers have all left the premises (which some foreign teachers are a little bitter about, but I don't care) and the nine foreign teachers are hanging out two floors below their bedrooms. There are two security guards in the foyer (which as far as I know only covers 1 out of 3 possible exits to the building).

If I was facing the same situation in Canada, the 7th and 8th grade students would be off the walls. I think ten of them would be having sex, three smoking pot, eleven of them drinking alcohol, seven of them escaping and going into town to get into trouble, four of them hanging out in a cemetary, and the next day half would be missing, a quarter would be hungover, a sixth would be bleeding and a tenth would be on fire. (one kid could possibly be dead)

This morning the Korean teachers were upset because five of the boys had had....

A DANCE PARTY

They turned on their music and DANCED.

And THEY are the 'bad kids' in the camp.