In a class of my own

 I guess the crux of travelling to a foreign country to teach English to classes of six and seven-year olds is that, inevitably, you will end up teaching English to classes of six and seven-year olds. Now, don’t get me wrong, six and seven-year olds are absolutely adorable but put thirty of them in a room and even the most adorable becomes quite hard work. The naughtiest boys in the class have a habit of amalgamating into noisy blobs of seditious activity. The more enthusiastic students, meanwhile, bounce up and down in front of you, screaming the right answers with limitless sycophantic glee. If you happen, also, to be blond in an area where white people are about as common as unicorns, expect to have every inch of your being hugged, probed and palpated with naïve, wide-eyed curiosity.  If, furthermore, you wear glasses, prepare for cries of “HARRY POTTER” every time you turn a corner. To start with I tried explain that Harry Potter isn’t blond and doesn’t have a personality, but yelling ‘Wingardium leviosa’ earns a far better reaction.

No portion of your anatomy will go unscathed. 

I nicknamed this affable young fellow ‘Limpet Opik’.

Over the nine-day summer camps, I teach a total of seven individual lessons three times each to three classes. Lesson themes include ‘story telling’, ‘maths’, ‘science’, ‘colour and beauty’, ‘music and rhythm’ and ‘love and gratitude’. Every afternoon, with the help of my wonderful local assistant teachers, we try to teach the poor bastards the curiously-worded camp song Shining Friends and, every so often, participate in a number of ‘fun’ activities such as dumpling making, where the kids rub flour in your hair, or ‘the water festival’, where the kids throw water in your face. Lesson plans aren’t provided, and the school’s advice went no further than ‘go in there and teach them whatever the goodness you want’. So far I’ve had the kids making paper aeroplanes, pretending to be pigs, and making rattles out of rice and plastic cups (disastrous). The pinnacle of awkwardness was certainly the water festival where four of the 22 ‘western teachers’ are plucked from their comfort zones, dressed in ridiculous costumes, very hastily taught a very difficult dance and then attacked by some 180 crazed water-wielding Chinese children and a power hose of the type used to remove encrusted grime from garden patios.

Costumes before the deluge.

Every second evening, or thereabouts, we have to host one of three other activities: the ‘Western Festival Rave’, the ‘Game Salon’ and the ‘Camp Fire’. I ended up re-enacting Hallowe'en dressed as (you guessed it) Harry Potter, getting them all to play sleeping lions, and teaching 90 impressionable young things The YMCA respectively. The novelty of The YMCA wore off the next day, however, when my teaching partner and I had to perform it impromptu, three times in quick succession in the boiling heat to the parents of every one of my students.

You’re a wizard Duncan (whether you like it or not)

I have just started my second week and while it is, I feel sure, an invaluable and ultimately rewarding experience, I currently just want to hide my head in the sand and cry. There’s another ‘Game Salon’ tonight, and I think it may kill me. On the bright side, at least I don’t have to perform in the ‘`Water Festival’ for another week.

When the male is showing off his strength to attract a mate, or to ward off 
predators, he starts off in a stiff-legged trot, jumping up into the air 
with an arched back every few paces and lifting the flap along his back… 
this ritual is known as ‘pronking’.