Another kid story: this fat girl in this week's camp, Han-byeol, got a little crush on me or something. She was always there before I was and she and whichever girls were with her would follow me around in the morning as I got ready for class. They'd offer to take my bag (which was fucking heavy because every day I go with a 1.5 litre bottle of Diet Coke and all the study books I'll need to keep myself entertained for five hours, plus the usual contents of my purse) and then watch me and comment on everything I did. Han-byeol liked to do stuff like brush the hair off my face and massage my shoulders, which I asked her not to do. It was much too weird. I do hope she's over it by the time school starts again.

It was an educationally successful week as far as I'm concerned. The kids at this school are absolutely the lowest level I've ever taught and as I said it required some work to get them to say anything at all in English, and yet by the end of the week they were joyously participating in the shopping role-play I'd designed, to the extent that they wanted to do it all through break and were sad when class finally ended. We ended right about at the same time as the last shop sold out, at which point kids wanted to start selling the flashcards they had bought. I had each group choose a shop (toys, pets, stationery or food) and plan prices and sales for the appropriate set of flashcards. Then one group at a time went shopping using Monopoly money as the merchants eagerly shouted, "Can I help you???" "Thank you! Goodbye!" and so forth. I almost died of cuteness.