Summer Days

Technically, summer began in late June, just after I recovered from my second attack of pneumonia. My girlfriend had left earlier the same week for her 5 week stay in the USA, hosted by the University of Maryland, in Baltimore, where she was visiting with 3 other Korean students from her nursing program. She had a wonderful time there, touring art museums, celebrating the 4th of July, going to baseball games, and visiting Philadelphia and New York, where she got to lounge on the beach and see the statue of Liberty. She even crossed the border to Canada briefly, to get the good view of Niagara falls (a landmark I haven't seen to this day).

Meanwhile, I recovered from a lingering cough just in time for the onset of the torrential downpour season. Some days the rain started well before dawn and just didn't stop. The rain would gush out of the sky as if through a giant sieve, and my valiant little $5 umbrella that I had purchased at the corner store was next to useless as I splashed my way to school in the mornings (at least I wasn't driving a scooter- Jared practically had to gargle his way to work and back). So I started to see the sense in the seemingly paranoid behaviour of Koreans totting giant umbrellas around, en mass, in weather that could hardly be called a drizzle. Koreans (at least the big city residents, which is most of them) live for the most part as if they would rather that "weather" didn't exist.
On a related note, I also made a purchase for the first time from one of those itinerant vendors who pace up and down the subways cars, hocking their wares; you name it- pipe cleaners, arm warmers, classic rock CD collections. I had promised myself long before that I would never buy anything from them, mostly because of the way they holler in your face on a packed, but otherwise respectfully quiet subway. However, I couldn't resist the guy selling the packaged ponchos - he was even taking a second hit to his dignity by sporting the ridiculous thing inside the subway, which I found oddly inspiring.

I finished administering exams and writing report cards for my 80 grade 4 and grade 1 students at the end of June, only to find out in July that the administration was just getting ready to up the ante with even more endless meetings to deliberate about the content of summer camp and tackle the ensuing prep-work. Originally, I was to prepare lessons for movie day, but when they decided to scrap Jared's cooking class, on account of potential "dangers", they did some brainstorming and shuffled around the teachers again, the upshot of which was that I was asked how I would feel about teaching Magic day.
So I said sure and leaped into the thing whole-hearted, determined to rekindle my passion for illusion and sleight of hand via Youtube and a deck of cards. I nailed enough tricks to keep the kiddies entertained and my afternoon magic class turned out to be something of a hit- the kids loved learning the secret and trying to replicate the illusions themselves. They were awed and slightly horrified by the antics of David Copperfield being sliced in two by a giant laser, and proceeding to bounce across the stage, his torso "holding" onto his bottom half. They also got a huge kick out of this priceless short video of a goofy David Blaine impersonator who has overestimated his magical prowess, to put it mildly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkjTeN6jGTk&feature=related

I started preparing my class of grade 3 students to perform a magic show for their parents at the end of the two week camp, which was last Friday. I soon realized that I would need to script and and film the performances of my students with my digital camera, which could then be projected on a screen above the stage for the children and their parents seated in the gym. Aside from the lousy audio and my shaky camera work, it went over reasonably well. Other highlights of the afternoon included a full length Musical ("Dream On"), an adorable girl/boy rendition of "Somewhere Out There" with awesome air guitar, a science of bubbles show, and a presentation of famous biographies (including a who's who of ancient Korean generals and royalty, along with an surprisingly eccentric selection of Western luminaries such as Mozart, Van gogh, Pascal, and some entomologist dude I'd never heard of before.
Camp days ran an hour longer than regular class days. We were even required to eat lunch with our students, as well as complete plenty of extra prep-work and evaluations to boot. On the bright side, the weather proved sunnier for most of the camp, and there were some good times, such as movie day (Coraline, a recent claymation movie based on Neil Gaiman's cheerfully creepy kid's book, was a hit), the field trip to the zoo at Children's Grand Park (Polar Bears!- 'nuff said), and the chance to witness my first solar eclipse with a bunch of equally amazed kids!

I'll have pictures to follow on the next blog, but for now I'm off to get some brief shut eye before heading off for my flight to Australia tomorrow morning, when my holidays start in earnest. I'll be sending my greetings from the Southern Hemisphere soon!