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Eoragegan manimnida (It’s a long time since we’ve met)

So another week has flown by faster than I knew possible! I’m trying to live it up in Korea as much as I can but camp is exhausting and I find myself wanting to relax in the evening, unacceptable! So hopefully, fingers crossed I can really jam pack these next few weeks. Monday started out very average, this week’s camp theme is Viking sails and dragon tails so we have themed a lot of things around the new how to train your dragon movie and the kids love it. Monsoon season is evidently coming to a close, though we have been told like eight times now that it has started and ended so who knows, but the sun has been out and shining and the temperature is rising. We normally do an all camp activity outside around eleven o’clock where all the kids play a big game then we have free time with balls, jump ropes, Frisbees etc. but this week has been hot. You can see the heat waves more than normally rising off the field and the kids go into lunch covered in sweat. My club this week is arts and crafts club so Monday we attempted to make our own kits out of construction paper, straws, and string. It worked better than I imagined but only one kid finished his kite. I think the important part though is that it occupied the kids for about fifty minutes, success. We did rotating activities in the afternoon and my activity was suppose to be sock puppets but the socks were MIA so we settled on printing out a Viking and a separate sheet with all his clothes and armor. You colored the Viking and the clothes then glued the clothes on, like a paper doll, best activity ever. I don’t know why but the kids were very into it and practically colored silently for each forty minute rotation. Needless to say I will be making more of those for activities. Monday night we went swimming then had a long meeting where we programmed two week’s worth of camp programming and evaluations. Tuesday I made paper maché with my camp, messy but fun, and very much enjoyed swimming with the Kinders and first graders. Wednesday was hot, this week as a whole was smoldering, but Wednesday particularly was hot. I got to take the Kinders and first graders bowling which was adorable. I watched Shaquan, Judae, Sean, Alijah, Jaylan, and Haylee bowl. Between turns we played the crack the egg on your head game and try not to laugh and spiders crawling up your back. They were so well behaved and cute until Judae bowled Shaquans ball and you would have thought Judae murdered his puppy the way he was crying. The boys in that group have also taken to calling me mommy and kissing me whenever I’m not paying attention. We have to have a talk almost every day about how it’s not ok to lick or kiss Miss Smartie and she is a counselor not your mom. On Thursday we had a field trip to Camp Carroll pool, another military base about forty minutes away. They have a big outdoor swimming pool with two water slides. The kids were so much fun that day. Whenever a counselor went down the water slide the kids would chant their name and hang out down in the splash zone, especially when one of the boys went. During one of the pool breaks we went into the kiddy zone, which is basically a bunch of sprinkles and fountains to run in. The kids started singing camp songs at the top of their lungs all by themselves and it was funny to watch the older kids lead them. One of my favorite campers Alex who is only five and very small for his age needs to be held in his lifejacket whenever he’s in the pool, I was holding him for a while and he was singing camp songs in my ear as I played with other kids. We put on sunscreen at every pool break, lunch, and before we left in the morning, and everyone still got fried. My whole back and shoulders were bright red and still hurt today. On the bus ride home all the kinders, and Devin fell asleep. They were so cute passed out on each other and against the windows. Thursday night a mom took us out to dinner at TGIF which was delicious. She is the mom of one of my kinders Taygan and gave us three options, Korean, Outback, or TGIF and it was unanimous that American food should be eaten. Taygan was really cute at dinner and she brought her seven month old baby so we each got to take a turn holding baby Taylor. She had the fattest legs I have ever seen and when I was holding her and sitting next to Taygan he would rub her back and be such a good big brother. Friday was a pretty fun day at camp. Saturday was Devin’s birthday so during small group I made him a happy birthday poster and they decorated it and wrote him messages. When he came back for lunch they were lined up with the poster and so excited to show him what they had drawn. Before cream the counselor that afternoon Mr. Rick thought it would be a good idea to fill up a ton of water balloons and have the kids throw them at Devin. We all turned around thinking the kids were lining up behind the counselor they wanted to cream when suddenly they were throwing water balloons at all the counselors not just Devin. These water balloons would not break and I took several to the face that just bounced off, painful.

Friday night we headed downtown around seven and found a little restaurant to eat dinner. I have something meat, with a brown sweet sauce, and rice, it was decent. We wandered around downtown for a while till around 9:30 then headed to the movie theater to see inception. The movie was pretty good, the boys thought it was the best thing they had ever seen and Jesa slept. After we came back and packed up for mudfest the next morning. I was pleasantly surprised my siblings were on skype and I was able to see their beautiful faces for about an hour. Saturday morning we woke up very tired and met up in our room. We had gotten Devin a birthday cake and made him blow out his candles before we left for the day. He hates his birthday so there were limited things we were allowed to say and do. We trained over at 8:05 and arrived at 10:45 in Boryeong. We had planned to meet up with some Yongsan people this weekend, Kristine, Amanda, Emily, and one other girl and luckily they were on our train. They were hungry and decided to go eat while the rest of us wanted to head straight to mudfest. We arrived to a huge blue banner and about ten blow up activities covered in mud. We walked through; mouths open in amazement, and found the free lockers to put our stuff in. We brought our brightly colored, rubber rafting shoes and enjoyed running around in our swimsuits and shorts. Our first activity was the mud painting station. They had little vanities and bucket things filled with mud and paint brushes and you could paint yourself and your friends. There was tons of Korean press there that took a million pictures of all the Americans, one guy told me to hold very still and put a grasshopper on my head after I was covered in mud and took about fifty pictures. After we were covered we decided to try our luck at an obstacle course. James, Jesa, Devin and I raced through this blow up maze jumping through holes, running through mud puddles, and crawling out. Devin won every time. Next we went to the mud prison where you stand in a little cave like thing with bars and Koreans throw buckets of mud on you. Next we decided to go to the mud wrestling ring. This is where the day got temporarily sour. We were all splashing mud and tackling each other when James took a huge wad of mud to the eye, he said I did it but who really knows. He couldn’t open his eyes and refused to do anything about it for about fifteen minutes. When the pain didn’t go away I took him down to the beach where he tried to clean it out with salt water and had me picking pieces of dirt out of his eye. We were down there for like forty five minutes, I felt really bad the poor kid was crying and his eye was swelling up. Eventually I convinced him to go to the first aid station where they had a long line of eye injured people and huge syringes full of saline solution. He felt a little better after that but not a ton. I felt guilty and quiet for about the next hour but luckily after that his spirits were better and I didn’t feel guilty having fun again. We went down a huge slip in slide next. It went straight down to the beach, Jesa and I went together and enjoyed smashing into each other and rolling down. We hung out at the beach for a while after that, there were a ton of people there, a lot of tourist and it was fun swimming in the brown dirty water. We decided to do some more “mud rides” it was basically like an amusement park in that you stood in line for about thirty minutes then slid down a slide, but we didn’t mind there was mud everywhere so we would just keep recoating from the floor as we waited. We rode another slide then returned to the beach for a little more swimming. Around four we decided to be cleaning up but we wanted some pictures totally covered in mud. We got back in line for mud wrestling, covered ourselves again and took many pictures on Jesa’s very muddy underwater camera (who knows if those will turn out) and a couple on James’s digital camera. We headed to the ocean one last time to clean up then went back to the lockers to change and find a place to eat dinner. We settled on a second floor restaurant down the street from the beach and Jesa and I enjoyed the best Korean meal of our lives. We had sweet and sour pork and fried rice. It was absolutely phenomenal. We ate more Korean food at that meal than probably all our other Korean meals combined. After dinner the entire Yongsan group left for their train and Jesa, James, Devin, and I headed back to the station. Our first train left around 7:45 and we were all sitting in different cars, a first for us. Everyone was super tired and I was slightly concerned that someone would forget to get off the train. Our second train we sat family style. Devin and James had bought Soju and some Korean wine and were already pretty far gone. We played Euker again, James and me vs. Devin and Jesa, day camp vs. aquatics. James and I were victorious much to Devin and Jesa’s demise. We chit chatted and Devin and James were absolutely hysterical. We made it back to base where they decided we just had to watch Juno even though Jesa and I were tired, they made it through about a third of the movie before Jesa and I were both asleep and they left. Devin said he had a very successful birthday and thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Sunday morning I woke up around eight and headed off to mass. I sat around a bunch of my campers and they were really cute to see in their Sunday best. After mass Jesa, Devin, and I headed back to Seomun Market for a little browsing, it was hot so we only poked around for about an hour. We bought some popsicles and headed back. The afternoon was spent very lazily napping and hanging out then early to bed.
I cannot believe it is almost August and how fast my time here is winding down. I can’t wait to see everyone in less than a month.

Love,

Elizabeth