Yamaha Summer Camp!
Anonymous
11:53:00 PM
This weekend I have been in Mie-ken (三重県) working at Yamaha English School's summer camp teaching Japanese children English! Most of the adults participating in the camp were already Yamaha staff members except for me, April and Jimmy. (And actually, my friend Ericka was supposed to do this job originally, but since she eventually found out she couldn't participate after all she recommended me instead. So a big thanks to you, Ericka!)
| Some of the kids who are waiting for the camp to start |
We started of Friday morning at Kyoto Station, where we welcomed around 230 kids ready to practice their English. At first they were quite shy, of course, but they seemed eager to learn at the same time. The kids were around 8-11 years old, and some of them had even been to the summer camp a couple of times before.
| Some of the boys |
On the train to Mie-ken we spent the time talking to the kids, asking them about their names, their favorite colors/animals/food and so on. And the kids were trying to collect "power-power cards", which they got from us after the conversations were finished. This made the kids even more eager to talk to us, and got rid of their shyness as well.
After the train ride, which lasted about 3 hours, we arrived in Mie-ken where there was 5 buses waiting for us. Our destination was the hotel Nemu no Sato (合歓の郷), which is not only a hotel but more like a tiny village (sato means village actually..) where they have different kind of activity areas such as a water-park, onsen, golf +++. It is actually quite cool! And not to mention its like heaven for the kids, haha:)| April and Jimmy in the back of the golf-cart taking us from the main hotel building to the building we were staying at.. |
| One of the lifeguards are taking a break. I guess he needed one, since the bunch of kids was about to arrive..! |
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| Aaand here we are! Probably more than 90% of the guests using the water park at this time was kids from the Yamaha summer camp..! |
| Group picture! All the staff members did a great job..! |
But the camp was not over yet; we still had Saturday to go! For this day my group started out with outdoor activities where we first taught the kids about the principles of reuse, refuse and recycle! The kids had already practiced vocabulary such as can, pet bottle, plastic bag and so on, so it seemed like they did not have much problems following the simplified explanations.
The second post of the program was crab fishing. To be honest I was a bit skeptical when I first heard of this, but there was actually quite a lot of crabs hiding in the small rivers so it was a great success as well. Though none of the kids actually caught the crabs they did manage to lure them out from behind rocks etc., and it was fun watching the crabs eating the bait as well.
| The kids being entertained by Johnny the Cowboy. Yeeha..! The kids really loved him! |
| "Barbie" and "Duzz" talking about clean energy |
| The kids lining up for autographs on the train back home.. They were so cute;) |
Now it is only a couple of days (and 4 exams) left till the summer holiday starts! 頑張らなくちゃ!


