UNESCO English Camp

I was at the UNESCO English Camp in Ota from Wednesday thru Friday. It's essentially a camp where jr. high school kids (usually the ones good at English) go to interact with native English speakers (ALTs), speak English, play sports and games, and make and perform English skits. Woo...what fun right? Hehe. Well, it was! Haha. Come on, now. You KNOW these kids didn't go to this camp to speak English! Haha. It's more of an excuse to have a huge sleepover with their friends, minus the sleep part. Otherwise, they're there b/c their teachers forced them to go, as is the case with my kids. This year, there were 15 ALTs and 51 students, 13 of whom were mine! Clazy. I wonder how my teachers threatened them. Haha.

Anyway, regardless of the reasons for going, I had a lot of fun! I loved how we got to interact with the students outside of the classroom environment. I felt as though I got to know the students a lot better, especially b/c we (well, most of us anyway) had to stay overnight at the camp. The girl ALTs' room was combined with the 1nensei and 2nensei students', so it's as if we had a huge sleepover with our kids! It was fun chattin' with the girls, as I found out who's going out with whom, which teachers they like/dislike at school, and I also got a lot of feedback on which of my games are good/bad. It was awesome. I'm really glad I stayed overnight, as it was definitely the time when I bonded with the students.

For our skit groups, Jeff and I had 2nensei boys so we combined our groups to make one. We ended up doing a Harry Potter skit, and our boy, Yasufumi, TOTALLY looked like an Asian Harry Potter!! It was scary how fitting it was! The funniest part of preparing for the skit was the utter fascination one of our kids, Akihito, had with dressing up as Hermione. He was soo into the make-up and stuff, even more so than we had hoped for! It was quite amusing, indeed.

The whole camp was pretty chill, and we even had a water balloon fight on the second day! The only MAJOR complaint we had was the food. It was terrible!! I mean, seriously, the worst food I've EVER had in Japan. I felt soo nasty after eating all the fried stuff they served us. Ugh. But yeah, anyway, camp was fun! Yaay for cute kids!


Jeff and my skit group, composed of 2nensei boys. Aww...they're soo cute! Each with individual personalities! Amazing!


The girl ALTs' room was conjoined with the students'. Didn't sound appealing at first, but it turned out to be soo much fun!


Yasufumi is an AWESOME Harry Potter! Just look at him!


Akihito is a little TOO into dressing up as Hermione, don't cha think? Hehe.


Look, it's the cast of Harry Potter! Kawaiiiiii!


I'm telling you, Japanese boys LOVE cross-dressing!


The girl to the left, Sai, is Korean! No doubt I hounded her with questions about Sam Soon and Rain! Hahaha. I'm surprised she wasn't like, "Get away from me, weirdo!" Haha...maybe it's b/c she LOVES Sam Shik and Rain as well! Woot!


Aww...they're all soo darn cute! I just want to take them home with me! Well, not really, but yah!