Winter Camp--Done!

Well, as I feared, MS Movie maker failed to export our second film, Ghost Story, so it languishes in msmm format on my classroom computer.

So instead, I'll post some photos from the previous two weeks, during which I did Detective Camp (5th and 6th graders) and Toys & Games Camp (3rd graders). First, being detectives:


In Toys and Games, we had a Scottish Highland games lesson, wherein we made up our own contests of strength and also played Maide Leisg, or the "lazy stick" game:


We had our own Olympics; we learned how to play flick football and three-penny hockey; we played Scrabble Jr, Boggle, and Go Fish; we made our own mancala sets out of egg cartons and learned how to play:


We also made three kinds of paper airplane, constructed our own duck calls and had a contest to see who could build the tallest tower out of straws:


A good time, but quite a lot of work!

Vacation Event

No, no problems with my upcoming vacation, although the same can't be said for the young family in this video.

Actually, this is the first of two films that will be created by my Winter English Film-making Camp at Yangmyung Elementary School. I was cameraman (I'm not letting a 10-year-old monkey around with my camera!), director and editor. However, the idea and the script were 95% done by the students. I cut about three lines and changed a couple of words, but what you see was really them--they are all fifth and sixth graders. I think it's cute.


Day 1 of camp is film terminology and story elements; Day 2 is creating their story and writing the script (I then type them up for ease of reading); Days 3 and 4 are principal photography; Day 5 is post-production. We got things a little out of order because some students had to be absent today. We edited film one and will finish film 2 tomorrow.

Now, I've wanted to do film-making camp for years, but everytime I suggested it at my high school, I got turned down--they wanted only "conversation camp". Even though not enough students signed up for it to make, most of the time!

Well, last summer at the elementary, I had to do an extra week of camp, and I did movie-making. The students wrote and acted, I directed and edited. I know you don't remember seeing them uploaded here, and that's because MS Movie Maker failed to convert them to any format beyond the msmm format, after a dozen attempts on three or four different computers. Now that this one worked, I may try again.

In any case, hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to upload the camp's second movie, Ghost School. Stay tuned to this channel.

Farewell, 2013!

A long-standing tradition here in The Seoul Patch, stretching back all of six years, is to provide some kind of assessment of the previous year in the first post of the new one. So here goes:

• Another contract signed with SMOE, and two semesters at Yangmyung Elementary School successfully completed
• A fair amount of vacation travel, to new places including a week in Vietnam, ten days in Palawan, Philippines, and five days in Malaysia, plus a nice return trip to good old Koh Samui
• Read and reviewed forty books this year, most of them good. You can click on book report in the label cloud to see all of them
• Made two awesome new friends, said farewell to two friends moving back home, and welcomed two old friends from Yong-in training days back into Korea--hurrah!
• Moved to a new neighborhood in central Mokdong with the largest flat I've had so far; three convenience stores, two bakeries, a greengrocer, a butcher and dozens of restaurants quite nearby

Here is the BBC's annual pub quiz show on the events of 2013, albeit with a distinctly British perspective. Enjoy!