Winter VIP Program

The first Monday after Christmas saw the start of English Village's big month long VIP (Vacation Intensive program). The kids come and stay here for a full month, taking classes, participating in clubs (like cooking, arts, dance, etc), houses (something like in Harry Potter apparently. I wouldn't know as I haven't seen the movies), and other activities. This is an exciting time for us as we get to deal with the same students for a month instead of only a week. Each teacher is assigned to a club and a house. Clubs start today, so maybe I will have more info on those later.


There are six houses, each of which has 2-3 classes (14-16 students/class). My house is called Marvelous Mamas and consists of three classes of girls. It's a superhero themed house and so the girls got to pick superhero names and many of our house activities have been based around the superhero theme. Jennifer's house is Casper the Friendly Ghost, and has three classes of girls also. In addition to house activities, there are also competitions between houses such as E.V. Idol, a talent show, and games.

This week in particular, I have been working a lot with class 9, which is also in my house. I have been trying to get to know these students especially since I will be working with them for the next 3 weeks now. Here's a funny story. We were instructed to walk backwards when leading the students to/from their classes and hotels, which is something I seem to be pretty good at, even with the snow and ice around. One day, while I was leading class 9 towards their classroom, In-he (one of the girls) told me to be careful. I told her thank you and she responded with "you're welcome." Then, she and the other girls in the front of the class started repeating the whole episode and giggling. Now, when I lead them, they often say "be careful! You're welcome" rapidly before I can even respond. Sometimes they crack me up! They also don't like me to walk backwards as I can't see where I am going, so sometimes they tell me to turn around so I don't fall. They are very sweet girls!