Mokpo camp

We have finally arrived at our camp, Mokpo Maritime University. We are right on the ocean and surrounded by beautiful mountains. We were greeted very warmly off the bus by a group of Koreans who had even drawn us a sign with all of our names on it. We got our room assignments and discovered that Wando wasn't so bad after all. The rooms here are very small and don't have bathrooms attached, we were also informed that bedding is not provided here (THANK YOU SUSAN! -she gave me her sheet), oh and no pillows. We have a community shower room and toilets, the wash machine doesn't work and there is no dryer. As I went to use the bathroom I noticed a very interesting lever on the side of the toilet, "what is this?" I wondered aloud to Christine as I bent over and pushed it down...SQUIRT! Water came out in a large arc and got all over my leg. Now I know it is a bedae (I hate French spelling) On the plus side we do have air conditioning and internet in the rooms...
I finally got to meet my Korean co-teacher. Her name is Ji Hye and she is very nice and a little shy. We practiced our lesson and made the materials we will need to teach. She is basically my assistant and will help me act out the lessons and help the children if they cannot understand what to do. Christine's co-teacher is very nice also, his name is something hard so we just call him "Sik." He insisted on buying us ice cream, when we first said no he said "Please, it is for my happy" and then we couldn't say no to something that cute. After dinner the Koreans brought us beer and fried chicken and we had a little celebration to help us introduce the people of the camp. It was really funny when some of the head teachers and discipline teachers spoke because we couldn't understand anything they were saying. I guess I took for granted how good we had it with Sherry (a Korean-American girl who came from Mizzou and did all of the translating) around. Anyway what I think I am supposed to do is get up and go to breakfast at 8 and then he said a bunch of stuff I didn't understand so I will just see where everyone else goes. Ji Hye informed me that my suspicions were correct about parents getting wind of our swine flu quarantine and not sending their children to camp. She told me that our class size will now be about 9-10 children per class. I won't even know what to do with so few of them! She also told me that the Korean teachers were nervous about it too...I pretended to sneeze on her after she told me and she laughed but there was definitely some fear in her eyes, hehe. We got shirts so we can all be matching tomorrow for the "opening ceremonies" woo-hoo. The Korean couples are so funny because many of them will wear matching shirts to show that they are together. We were joking that now we are like couples. They also mark the time they have been together by counting the days. 100 days is a big anniversary for them and they thought it was very strange that we don't celebrate our 100th day together. I told her that Ian and I have 3,000 days and she laughed. I wonder how many days it has actually been. It is a full moon tonight and out my window I have a view of a big rocky mountain, it is completely lit up with light of different colors. Hopefully many pictures and funny stories to tell soon. We don't actually start teaching our units until Sat. but tomorrow we meet the kids and come up with a team name and a cheer, I can't wait to meet them, I hope they can understand what I am saying! We teach our units for 6 days in a row, 2 times a day. I think the days will feel really long and get boring pretty fast. The schedule is like this:
8am breakfast
8:40am meet w/ homeroom students
9am begin first block (3 hours--I teach the "Hospital" booth)
12pm lunch
1pm begin 2nd block
4pm practicing song/dance...then I get fuzzy on what we're doing but I don't think we finish working until 8 or 9pm. Whew. Better get some rest for tomorrow!