This is the final week of English camp, and this week it's the grade fours. Now, when we held the camp orientation, the grade threes and fives who showed up all looked like those keener girls who have ten different colours of ink in their Hello Kitty pencilcases and raise their hands until they're almost levitating every time I ask a question. This was about right; they weren't all so good at English, and many were quite shy about speaking, as I've discussed, but I haven't had any discipline problems whatsoever these past two weeks.

In contrast, the grade fours all looked like boys whose parents were taking any excuse to get them out of the house. When I asked my coteacher which of them were good at English, his answer was, "No one special". On the first day of camp only two even showed up, so we just watched Harry Potter. Today I had three, which I considered was enough to teach, and it actually went quite well. I suspect two of the three would be problematic in a bigger class, but since my eyes were always on them, they didn't act out. None of them were really shy and that made everything so vastly much easier. I've been thinking the camp should have been named, "English: There, there. It's not so bad". But these three were easier to work with and if things carry on this way I may well enjoy this camp more than either of the other two where I had more of an "English cheerleader" role than a teaching one.

Outside of work? Well, I have a friend, at last. He reminds me a lot of Randy and so it's been very easy to talk to him because aside from us having a lot in common, I can pretty much just act as if he were Randy and it works pretty well. I went up to meet him in person last weekend and spent the whole time playing one video game after another while listening to music I already liked and music I'm gonna like. We both have nothing to do at work in the afternoons, so we chat a lot, and it's fun.

The problem with all this is that this guy is married. He's in the army doing graphic design and his wife is back in Texas and I am very afraid that even just being friends with a lonely married guy is going to lead to disaster for some if not all of those concerned. But then, I also... really just can't surrender it, I'm too lonely, and it's too wonderful to have someone I can talk to about more than what I had for dinner. So, as usual, I'm gonna ride that train until it derails and ends in a fiery crash, I suppose.