July 24, 2011
Today was the last full day of camp. Tomorrow we have a homeroom and a closing ceremony before lunch, and then the kids leave. Some teachers already have children that have gone home. I will miss my kids, but will be glad that summer camp is over. The days are just too long.
Yesterday was a normal day around here. My kids preformed O Canada last night, and I am still convinced they were the best performance in the skits. A teacher told me that we were the only class that went yesterday that he could understand everything, and it even had a melody! I was really proud of my kids. They did really well. In dress rehearsal, a couple of them decided that “God keep our land” was actually “Oh Canada” so I got my angry teacher face on and drilled them until they perfected it. You can hear that a couple still said Oh Canada in that line, but it’s better than it was.
The other performances were fairly good, but the microphones didn’t always work. My kids sang loudly so they would be heard regardless, but many classes didn’t. I am pretty sure my class did it only because they all like the sound of their own voice, so they have to be louder than their neighbor. I have sent a video to John and hopefully he will be able to post it to the blog. The boys from Florida (Kalyn’s classroom) have put together a hilarious dance sequence which I videoed.
Today was again a fairly normal day. In the morning, we did journals from the last couple of days, and then we looked at the pictures and videos I have taken of the children during the last two weeks. After break time, we had an awards ceremony. I gave every child a pencil, a lollipop and some stickers, and they chose from other Canada items I had. I had also written a mini report card (all positive) in their vocabulary books overnight, so I presented the vocabulary books back to them at the same time. I had the books all mixed up, and randomly chose a new book so that I wasn’t going in any particular order. They had all wanted to keep their flags after Oh Canada, but only one child took a flag as his gift. I had a picture taken with each of them as I presented the stuff. However, this only took half an hour. We still had an hour left in our morning so we watched Japanese movies with Chinese subtitles for the last hour. I thought it would take much longer or I would have done a lesson first!
At lunch today, a guy came to check out my mold problem. He cleaned the a/c vent and went away. My walls and floor are still wet. He also turned the a/c on to a chilly 16 degrees. I promptly turned it up to 24. I hate walking in from boiling into freezing, although I do like a slight difference! I don’t like running the a/c as the air makes my throat hurt, but if it helps…. Last night I left my door open for 2 hours, and my floor dried out. An hour later, the floor was wet again. I think I will move when camp is over. A lot of people are going home or whatever. I found out today that as of tomorrow night, there is no more hot water at the school until mid-August. We are not leaving the school until at least Wednesday as we do not have our passports yet. Luckily, a shower at night in cold water feels good! It won’t be so nice in the winter time!
My afternoon rotation had swimming time, so I didn’t have to play dodge ball for the last time. I went to Florida where my class was, and they were watching Kung Fu Panda. I watched with them, and then we went back to the class and signed our vocabulary books (which is where I did the reports). After dinner (which sucked – no meat just pasta and fries and vegetables – after a breakfast where I arrived to only three pieces of bread left) we had the second half of our skit night with the older classes performing. They put on more skit like things than we did, but I was in the 3rd row and couldn’t really hear anything. My kids were visibly bored.
Tomorrow, we have our closing ceremony, which involves our state cheer, a song we learned the first day of camp and an awards presentation. I guess all the teachers, the national teachers and the helpers get a present of some sort, and then 6 kids from each class have been selected as the “best” students (for whatever criteria – my kids is based on behavior) also come on stage, leaving the other 18 students on the ground watching. Sounds a bit like a gong show to me. But, what do I know? It’s always a gong show around here!
My kids all told me they love me tonight. It almost made me cry. Twenty little people, all at separate times, coming up to me and saying the world’s sweetest words: I love you. I responded in kind to each of them. I really will miss them. A couple of my kids decorated the chalkboard today, mostly in Chinese. I am told it says they love me and will miss me and hope to see me next year at camp. They all signed it. *Love*
Everyone is going out in about an hour, but I plan to crawl into my damp bed and get a good night’s sleep. I promised them that if they go out tomorrow, I will come. (We are finished by noon tomorrow I think, but we do have to clean out our classrooms as well.) I hope to get somewhere to buy an umbrella tomorrow. It’s PG weather – hot in the day and rain by 5 pm! Kalyn and I are also going to try to plan out our month off… we have ruled out Beijing as we don’t want to climb the wall in this heat. I heard a rumour Tibet is currently closed to visitors so that might be out too. With the sun came intense heat, we are thinking a beach might be nice, but only if we can find a “quiet” one. I think I had one recommended, but I will have to look into it!
I am going to have a shower and head to bed! Thanks for being awesome!
PS I am also going to re-open my blog to comments, so comment away if you want to! LOVE YOU!
