March English Camp-whew!

All I can say about this week is “Whew! It’s over!” I feel like I need to sleep for several days just to recover. Every week we teach for three mornings in an elementary school, and now we also have English Club on Friday mornings, plus staff English lessons in the afternoons. Well, on top of that we added our once-a-month English Camp! It was my second camp here, and for some reason I had the hardest time writing the curriculum for it this time around… which made for some late nights frantically putting things together. Luckily, I’m working with a great team of people, and I’m happy to say that we pulled it off, and pulled it off well- if I may say so myself.

Last month we realized that we had grown past the reasonable capacity of our office, so we had to find another location. After much searching, we were allowed to use the meeting room at the mayor’s office. I think meeting there, plus being active in a public school for a month greatly added to our credibility, because the attendance at English Camp grew this week in staggering proportions! Last month we averaged around 50 kids a day (with actually about 70 kids in all attending at some point). This month we grew to over 90 students by Friday (with over a hundred attending at some time during the week)! That’s A LOT of children in one room. One HOT room, I may add. The sheer numbers made us have to creatively adjust a few things, but in the end, it all worked out.

We taught about family, descriptive adjectives and jobs. It was a lot of fun leading 90 kids in silly motions for the various descriptive adjectives (friendly, serious, clever, etc). We also played rowdy games in the front parking lot and led craft projects. We had kids showing up over 45 minutes early, just wanting to hang out, and lingering as long as possible afterwards as well. If that's not a mark of some sort of success, than I don' t know what is! A lot of fun was had by all, but I must say I’m relieved to have a respite this next week!

This morning I enjoyed sleeping in, and then wandering into the kitchen to find my friend hacking into some fresh coconuts! There’s nothing quite like fresh coconut water first thing in the morning. Yum!