Tranquil misty mountains, camps and landslides!

Well we've had an interesting week and thought I'd share it with you!!
Amy - another native English teacher and I started 4 weeks of camps this week at both middle and elementary camps.

We started the week in Mulya - a small village school with just 30 students doing a one day camp which was good fun!
We did a few activities including drawing in the dark (with blindfolds) cooking - making a sandwich.
I've shown some photos for you to check out.
Then this week I did a two day camp alone at Meyongho - anohter village school with 25 kiddies.
We had fun - repeated some activities and added some new ones like scrabble game, and a really cool cartoon skit where students acting out a silent skit and i photographed the 6 scenes and then they had to make their own cartoon. Kids loved seeing their pictures!!

We had an elementary school camp which Amy and I had to organise - 3 days overnight sleeping up in the mountains with 3 other native teachers helping from a neighboring city. Well about 10 days ago the first native teacher called he had damaged his knee and had to go to hospital so were down to four teachers and 75 students. Then at 10pm the night before camp I get a phone call the wife native teacher has been rushed to hospital with a suspected stroke!! so obviously the husband can also not attend!! we sent our love and apologies but then had the task of how to find more teachers for a camp next morning!!

We thought this should be the end to our curse but apparently not!!

We arrived and started camp - had a great time - kids were awesome and after some re planning to accommodate the new teachers (this is about the 4th time we have planned this camp due to 'alterations!!' we thought yayaa it's all sorted!

We did 4 activities - farm animals, mask making, rainforest animals and STREAM/RIVER searching for animals!! - remember this point!!! We finished with a talent show headed by Amy and I as the rappers!!
Then next day we did round the world with passports so students visited - Australia - dot painting, USA - dream catchers, ~South African - game and Malawi drumming. We had a great sports day and quiz.

Then it hit - thunder and lightning, torrential rain and the river rose and rose and rose. Official reports say that 1/4 meter rain fell in 12 hours.

At 5 am we were woken to be told we couldn't leave in the morning as planned after our water sports events as the road had subsided into the river and there had been a huge mud slide. Worse still the food car was trapped below the problems so we had no food as yet!!! The stream we had been paddling and swimming in was a raging river with waves crashing down and over the road, dumping trees and logs and huge stones everywhere!

We had to keep the kids occupied for the entire day while korean teachers raced to find food and efforts to get us out!! Now the funny thing is the night before Amy and I heard sirens like bomb alerts going off and asked what are they for - we explained in the West they were generally a warning for a storm or something but were told no not important!! turns out they were warnings for the potential natural disaster to warn all people to leave!! ah well!!

We got to a village restaurant for breakfast but he had only enough to feed us once so we did shuttle runs with cars through the flooded roads before they got too bad to continue.

Then for lunch we had pot noodle raided from every village store they could reach!!!

We finally were told the bulldozers could hold back the landslide for one hour for people to leave but if we did not exit in the time we could not leave.
The road collapse was stable as long as only driving very slowly and the snapped telegraph poles had been pushed over further into the river.

We got in the buses and off we went - quite a military operation - each time the bulldozers allowed a little more to fall - cleared and stood guard another maybe 10 cars could drive through before stopped and continued.

We were very happy to get out - all the way along we kept seeing more and more road disappearing and thinking this must be the main problem and each time it got worse!!

I'm now super tired from all the mayhem, lack of sleep and general worry of 75 kids stuck in the mountain with no food!! Amy and I said one the worst things was the feeling of helplessness. We kept asking for them to buy food and explaining we needed them to buy supplies as we could see the road becoming more and more blocked but language barriers were difficult! You feel so helpless trying to get someone else to understand.
They managed to understand and bought the pot noodle and snacks. Then realized what we meant when at lunch time the road was no longer passable!! We didn't fancy 75 screaming kids with no food!!!

Ah well thought you may enjoy the pictures! Emotional roller coaster of a few days!! :)

Latest news is 8 dead from the landslides and more missing and injured with Bonghwa the worst county hit in South korea! I'll keep you posted if I find out any more! We're now in a heat wave so the floods are drying up nicely!!

Love to you all - only 5 weeks left!!!! Can't believe it!!!!!

Cer xxxxx

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