Expedition Camp 2006

Yet another year I got dragged into helping with the church’s summer camp for the children’s ministry. At the time I was proposed to help with the camp by my mom I had already been away a total of 20 days combined between my 1 week teen summer workshop at the Art Institutes international Minnesota and my Japanese Camp in Dent, Minnesota at Mori No Ike. This is mind all I really wanted to do was to sleep in my own warm bed at home for 12 hours at a time. Anyways I had no way out of it and nothing constructive to do at home so I decided to go anyways.

And as always it wasn’t that bad. I got to know the children’s pastor a little bit, he’s kind of quirky but he is a good guy and loves what he does so props to him. The second morning I decided to drop in on a counselor meeting because I knew of a prank that was at hand. Our youth pastor PJ(not the childrens pastor, his name is Jordan) walked in very angry with a bag of “marijuana” that was actually oregano and tricked everyone into thninking that someone was going to get into trouble for it. During breakfast however PJ let the counselors knew that they just got “punk’d” and the kids had no idea what was going on and kept on asking about it.

Since the last time I had been up there (our church frequents this camp) they had installed a new asset to their shorefront for swim time which was a giant green saturn. The saturn later dubbed “The gree moo moo” (inside joke) was big and inflated and was tipped many times by some of the older guys that were helping with the camp and it was good fun.

Througout the camp all I basically did was help out with a few games and preperation for events, chill talk with some of my friends who were counselors, sleep and play my DS lite. The only unfortunate thing about the camp was that alot of kids were getting hurt, there was one sprained ankle a couple scrapes and bruises, some bonked heads, a black eye and a broken leg =(

On the way back it was about 90 degrees and two of my friends who were counselors, they were supposed to ride for an hour and a half or so in an un air-conditioned bus with my help tried to stow away in the trunk of my mom’s truck. The almost could’ve gotten away with it but right before we left my mom went to put some chocolates in the back when she saw them and looked in disbelief at how they were intertwined in our luggage and kicked them out.

Thats about it for that story, nothing really amazing happened (for me), so untill next time see you later.

My experience at the Concordia Japanese language camp

This summer I finished my first 2 week-long session at Concordia language camp for Japanese. The camp’s name was “Mori No Ike.” The students who stayed for 2 weeks long were known as Satos, and sometimes the Sato and the Gaakse(?) those who stayed for 4 weeks were separated for different activities; each group had a different schedule as well. The schedule is similar to the following (some times may not be correct); 8:00am was wake up time followed by Rajio Taiso which is a series of exercise and some line dancing then we had breakfast. After breakfast we had our morning classes that were taught by one or two senseis or teachers, break time then our first morning club. The morning club that I had for the first week was Okinawa style karate. I didn’t learn that much but we went over a few stances some basic punching and kicking, and Bo staff moves. Shortly following 1st club was song time then lunch. After lunch all of the students Sato and Gaakse returned to their cabin for quiet time and to receive their mail; nap time lasted until 3:00. After nap time we had freedom time where we could purchase Japanese candy, swim, socialize or practice Hiragana. A normal pattern for me during Jiyu Jikon for me was to sit down at a table with friends from my cabin or Ochii with either Isihigo Pocky or Yan Yan, play a game of cards and then study my Hiragana. After Jiyu Jikon we had our second club.

My second club for the first week was dance. I was under the impression from my sensei that the dances would be pre choreographed just like the sore sore dance during Rajio Taiso. Well… I was wrong, I had mistaken it for the dance classes during Jiyu Jikon which I never attended. It was somewhat horrendous but I ended up during the last two days tacking over command and getting 1:00 of the song choreographed, which is an accomplishment for me.

The Second set of clubs I picked for my last week was origami and film club. Probably the coolest thing I learned how to make in the origami class was the envelope. In film we based our movie off of soilin’ greens is people and did “tofu is made of people.” And the video can be seen here [...] (I will find the link later).

After second club we have a song time where we either learn a song or dance and then we have dinner. After dinner we went to the camp fire and sang songs once more and then all the cabins were called off in order, and then after doing all the night time hygiene practices we went to bed.

Over the 2 week course I learned how to almost fluently read and write Hiragana and was able to look at a word in English to Japanese dictionary and write it down in Hiragana, and I am very proud of myself for that. The camp did an amazing job of introducing me to Japanese and helping me understands how to speak and write it, although I don’t quite know grammar mechanics yet.

The sensei’s there are also amazing as well the senseis that were in my cabin were Kojirou-sensei, Shirou-sensie and Hiroake-sensei; they all had amazing personalities, and talked in English in the cabins which helped make the stay better.

The kids in my cabin were also really cool as well and I got to be really good friends with all of them and I even plan on meeting a few of them again after I graduate next year. One of them I met was anticipating the release of the new PC phantasy star online game that was coming out soon as I was and we are definitely going to play it together.

All in all the camp experience was an amazing one and I will post photos in my next article.