The week before Samuel
Night was spent trying to keep Laura sane as she prepared for Luther High
School’s English Summer Camp. I was to be a counselor, but as Laura is a J-3 at
Luther she had more responsibilities towards the planning in cooperation with
the other J-3’s (Luther is lucky enough to have three) and the Japanese English
teachers. I didn't do much except provide cheerleading, and I went to Luther on
one day to help organize some props for the skit. We were
super productive...
We headed up to camp on buses with the students on the Wednesday after Samuel Night. Upon arrival we
met up with the other counselors for the week and introduced ourselves to the
students before being placed with our groups. The theme of the camp was “Music”
so each group was represented by a musician. I had originally been given
Brittney Spears, but I begged off and got One Direction instead. I had a great
group, but they were super quiet; all girls, both first and second year high
schoolers, and they were in the Tokushin English course. Which just means they
focused on English. Intensively. Now, don’t let this fool you into thinking
that meant that communication between me and them was smooth sailing. It was
not. But we muddled through and figured it out.
One of the interesting
things about this camp was that it counted towards the students’ summer school,
so the counselors had a lot of down time while the teachers worked with the
students on actual coursework. But being that it was camp, when the counselors
were on, we were ON. So mostly we just crashed when the teachers took over. The
first night we had some free time and I meandered outside to hang out with the
students, who also had some free time at that point, and were kicking soccer
balls around the field.
Once we realized that we
had four games of “Pass the soccer ball” going on, we decided to actually have
a game. It was an epic struggle on par with the Women’s World Cup of 1999, USA
v. China. Only with lots more laughter and silliness. Luther’s soccer team is
really quite good, so we split up the soccer boys onto both teams and then the
rest of us just fell in. To tell the teams apart the girls voted that our team
would tuck in our t-shirts and hike up our pants/shorts as high as possible.
This led to intense giggling by both teams, especially when we counselors on
the high-waisted team joined in. I was pleased to discover that I hadn't lost
all my soccer skills in the six years since I have played and we had SO MUCH
FUN!! It was like the swimming hole all over again; you didn't need to be able
to speak the same language to find laughter and hilarity when a kicked ball hit
a tree… twice in a row. Or when two of the boys ran full tilt towards the ball,
had an epic crash, and then shook it off laughing as only teen boys can. Or the
insane huddles where we did the Kumamoto Roasso (the professional soccer team in these parts) cheers and chants. There was singing, cheering, laughing,
goals scored on the wrong team, falling (lots of falling), some flying, and
high-waisted pants. We ended in a heap of laughter with no real idea of what
the score was or who had won. Which is exactly how sports at camp should be
played.
Later that night I had my
first sighting of the dreaded Japanese Huntsman Spider. It was huge as spiders
go, but honestly, not as big as I expected. One of the Japanese teachers
sprayed it with some insecticide and then she just scooped it out the window!
Brave woman. I was standing on my chair. Like that was going to help me. One of
the counselors was from Sri Lanka and he was laughing at me. Well they might
have bigger spiders in Sri Lanka, but I prefer Nebraska spiders. Later that
night I rolled over on my bunk and noticed another, on the wall across the
room, bigger than the first. I couldn't sleep until it was dead, even with one
of the Japanese teachers telling me how good they were to have around because
they eat roaches. I don’t know, I might prefer the roach… I do have a foolproof
plan though, should one of the nasties ever invade my apartment. The former J-3
of my quarters loved the Twilight books so I inherited the complete series.
Originally I was planning to sell it to the local used book store, but not
anymore. They are my spider killers should I ever need them. Sorry Ally. Also,
thanks! Anyway, tangent. Back to camp.
The next day was a bit
more intensive than the first because our students were preparing for their
evening English skits! Each group had to write a skit about their band or
musician being in a silly situation. For example, we were given the premise
that One Direction was stranded with no money and had to get to the airport. In
addition to the random scenarios that we were given, there was also a bag of
the most random props imaginable.
Anyway, my girls came up
with a really cute skit (and One Direction has never looked so good… or so
feminine and Asian J). In the skit two of the girls are thieves and they
rob One Direction using squirt guns. Here are the lines they came up with:
Girl 1:
Hey we are thieves!
Girl 2:
Stick them up!
Girl 1:
Give us all your money!
* One
Direction squeals and hands over fistfills of yen
Girl
1&2: Thank you! *wave, dance off stage*
The politest thieves you
will ever meet. One Direction then has lots of trouble getting a taxi (because
they look like “hooligans”… where do they get these words?! I didn’t use it)
until… an elephant shows up?
Girl 5: Hello I am an
elephant! I can help you!
One Direction screams some
more.
Girl Liam: No! You will
kill us!
You get the gist. So the
elephant gives One Direction a ride to the airport. We had elephant ears in the
skit bag which is how they came up with that I guess, though in the actual skit
one of the thieves wore the elephant ears and the elephant wore a Hawaiian lei...
We didn't win the grand
prize, but I was so proud of them! One of the girls in my group has a form of
autism and was very anxious about the whole thing. I wanted to dance when she
said her lines in front of the whole group! She was One Direction’s manager,
the best manager One Direction never had, and she only had two lines… but they
were the opening and closing ones! She got through the opening lines with no
trouble, but struggled with her last ones. She forgot halfway through and
giggles broke out in the audience, but she stood her ground! One of my other
lovely ladies stepped forward and whispered her lines in her ear and she
finished. Those girls are total sweethearts.
After the skits it was
time to make homemade pizza using the brick ovens that the camp had. The
campers had to listen carefully as all the instructions were in English. They
had a lot of fun with it though, and the pizza was so tasty! Then we had
campfire and fireworks and… S’MORES!!! I was so excited!! Smores like I have
never done them before, we put the marshmallows on bamboo sticks to roast.
S’mores are a foreign thing to most of the students. They like them, but don’t
really know how to make them and get pretty nervous about getting close to the
fire, so the counselors roasted quite a few for the others. I was on the
demonstrating team, which meant I ate one too many mallows… I was also the girl
with the sparklers, which meant I never lacked for company, and was often
surrounded by students wanting はなび or hanabi (fireworks).
The next day we packed up
and headed out back to Kumamoto. It was a good camp, short and sweet. I really
enjoyed myself and I think the students did too. The best part? The soccer game
and the pizza. Hands down.
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| With new friends at the end of a great camp! (Photo used with permission) |
