And I'm writing the final certificates for my last camp this summer. Where has it gone? I spent two weeks of camps with just one other tutor, a wonderfully mad Canadian, that was painfully organised and lacked the ability to multi-task. I learnt never to even try to start, continue or finish a conversation with her as soon as she lost eye contact. Regardless, I couldn't have wished for a better tutor to have worked with and a better friend to have spent 2 weeks being the only other fluent English speaker. We rolled our eyes at the length of dinners with host families, we worked out ways to get to leave the dinner table when the children did, we played games to retain a little sanity, made innapropriate and incomprehensible jokes during story time, and fell asleep in the office for 20 minutes before the final show. We sprayed each other with mosquito replant, spent an afternoon in an Italian hospital, laughed hysterical at the children copying our over-exaggerated dance moves and fantasised about mad "what if" stories. We nearly got run over on various bike rides, took artistic pictures and sweated profusely in one of the hottest weeks of the summer. We shared life stories, laughs and then said goodbye. It's such a strange feeling, after dinner out on a Friday night, you hug, get into your host family's car and wave. That's it. You'll occasionally Facebook message and hope you'll bump into them at some point but the foreseeable future involves a new set of people.
So, I packed and left my IOW postcard on the table and headed for Treviso, my last camp. After a few weeks of small camps it was such a relief to spend some time with people of my own age. We had a mass of 8 helpers and 5 tutors, which meant we spent a few evenings out together. In fact my class of this camp was probably the best company I've had all summer. After researching how children learn and having weeks of experience of teaching different ages I feel like I've finally sussed out how to get the right balance between letting them go crazy and bundling me and actually willingly speaking English. Now, obviously, any teacher, instructor or tutor will know that some children just do not give a shit. They are there to make that teacher vein in your forehead come out but I didn't have any of them this week. The camp director had warned me about a certain boy who had been at City Camps for 3 years now and was always the cause of said protruding vein but he was an absolute star. I let him paint my face, played piggy back wars and laughed every time the class
repeated any word I said (which lasted for a good 15 minutes). Subsequently, this boy, along with the rest of the class, not only learnt their show words perfectly but tried to explain and ask everything in English. Having this 9 year old 'troublemaker' in front of you, getting all aggigtated, hopping from one foot to the other trying to find the words to tell you about the fact he has a t shirt at home with the name of the football player that he is in the final show, is more rewarding than when they repeat the present continuous to you. I was completely blown away by all of them. On the Monday evening we all went to the camp director's house for a pizza and a 2 hour after camp meeting. This definitely set the tone of how the camp director wanted this week to run. Despite the eye rolling between tutors over the table and pointless conversations that went round and round, we had a hilarious dinner with the helpers, sharing random stories and then headed into the town where the streets were buzzing with people for the carnival. We followed the Italian ritual of going to a place and standing around for a good 20/30 minutes before heading somewhere else and continuing the waiting. It is impossible to go out with a group of Italians and not experience this. Yet it was a beautiful evening and we all rolled into camp the next morning looking like death warmed up after getting back home after 2am. Oh Italy.
Despite the slight disagreement between the camp director and tutors, it was a fantastic week. Had such fun and it made me want a 2 week camp but I'm so proud to have ended on such a high. I am so blessed to have had such a wonderful range of camps, tutors, classes and families. I can't believe that's the end of drawing pictures of sheep, teaching directions with blind folded children clambering over tables and smiling ridiculously at the final show when the children are singing their hearts out and your wobbling on a chair at the back of room making faces to make them smile.
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