On Sunday I attended an English camp put on by the international center of Toyama. It was for the equivalent of high school-age students in America (14 and up). It was a lot of fun. We met on Sunday morning and then took a bus to the mountains, near Mt. Tate. We stayed at a ski lodge which is used as a conference center / retreat during the summer. It was gorgeous up in the mountains. However, it was still quite hot, despite the altitude change.

I co-taught a workshop with another English teacher, Rob. We did a two hour workshop on games and group communication activities. It was hard to encourage the students to only talk in English, because they are very worried about their ability level. They also really didn't want to go outside, so we had to stay inside, which limited the types of activities or games that we were able to do. I think they enjoyed the activities, and some of them provided a way to meet the other participants, since they came from many different schools.

After our workshop, there was a one hour one where we split up into groups and played a Jeopardy-esque game. My team didn't do too well though, and came in 4th place out of 5 teams.

At the same time that we were at this retreat, there were a lot of Boy Scouts there. A Japanese scouting group, and a group of Australians who were touring Japan were there at the same time. It was neat seeing them interacting. The Australians had come to Japan for a special jamboree. It was for scouts with disabilities. They all seemed to be enjoying Japan well and were excited about climbing Mt. Tate the next day.

That night I took a bath in the Japanese-style bath (i.e. public), and it was the hottest water I have ever felt in one of these baths. I had red marks on my body when I got out of the bath! I could only stay in for a minute.

The next day we had two more workshops. One was on Australia, which was very fun. The other one was on travelling to foreign countries, either on vacation or backpacking-style. It was pretty good too.

After the workshops, we left the retreat and went to a campground where they had big barbecue pits. We split up into groups and then cooked up lots of food. There was too much food at my table, and we didn't eat it all. After that we went back to Toyama. I thought it was just volunteer, but they gave us 5,000 yen ($40) worth of book gift certificates. I now have about 7,000 yen worth of those certificates. I should go buy a Japanese study book or something.

I was really glad to do the camp though, because it was a lot of fun. The kids were also very excited about English. It is great to see such kids, since so many of the kids I teach aren't very confident with their English. It has helped me be more excited about teaching again, since maybe I can inspire more of my kids to get better.