New friends and new perspectives

Days and now weeks have gone by and I still feel like I am living one big dream. I can’t tell if this is what feeling alive feels like, or if there is crack in my coffee. Either way, I am so completely out of my elements of comfort and normalcy, that my body and mind still can not catch up, leaving me in a constant dreamlike state of mind. I thought after graduating college and finishing my fellowship year was the behold of life challenges. That is up until these past three days. Never in my life did I imagine working at a school  as a camp counselor would be my challenge in this trip to Vietnam. How could it be? Five years of teaching experience in low income schools of Philadelphia, and going and working at a day camp my whole entire life. Little did I know… To put things into perspective “stand in a line” and “hold hands and form a circle” is a foreign language to my first graders. I have spent the past three days teaching kids what forming a line means and looks like. Yes, these students are bilingual but at the age of 6 a lot of language is still developing. Any language related to Physical Education or team building activities has never been introduced into their worlds. Their  focus has been on education and how to behave in a classroom. For many, this is their first time they are hearing such vocabulary.  I thought possibly for sports I could have them do a simple obstacle course, until 30 seconds later I found they did not know the language aspect or the physical aspect of “bounce a ball.” I have also failed to mention—NAMES!!!! Learning Vietnamese is a very difficult language as it is a tone language. You can pronounce the word correctly but if you do not have the correct tone it changes the meaning of the word. So yes, I have 50 students whose names I can not pronounce to save my life. So, on top of my language barrier, and inability to “form a line” I am calling all of my kids by “Hey you.” I have been doing my best to find nicknames for kids like spiderman, pop-star, Elsa etc. I guess coming from my previous camp experiences I didn’t expect to be playing duck duck goose all summer (The only successful activity I’ve had thus far). My cooking teacher today put things into a great perspective for me. She said “Katie, parents drive around on mopeds with their babies not wearing helmets. It’s okay). Since then, I have relaxed a little. It’s camp and the only thing that is important is that the kids are smiling. And that they are. I know it will get better. It has each day. I asked myself back in the states for a new challenge, and sure did I get it. On the brighter side of things, my directors and staff are fn wonderful. I think the concept of adding a camp curriculum into their academic setting is genius for these children. Down the road, this camp is only going to prosper.

I love spending time with my new camp friends and getting to know people from all over the world.  We were talking about the Orlando shooting yesterday. It came to my attention that America is the only country with these mass murders going on. My friends from Ireland, England and the UK never witness this. They say not even police carry guns. No one even knows anybody who owns a gun… it’s just not a thing.  It made me sad that people think of America as a scary place. They are shocked and blown away by the fact that my students have to walk through metal detectors each day before entering school. Times have changed and so should our amendments. How are we still following the same set of rules that were written in 1776?

NAMaste with ORLANDO .