Bad boys

After the craziness of yesterday with the boys, I was asking people around the camp for ideas on what to do with the boys to keep them interested and under control. They all said to get them physical, out of their seats, in stations, and I thought I had a great plan. It was going to be 3 stations involving "Following Directions" with one counselor at each station and me running the third. One station would be Twister and then the other two would be actions that involve acting out/commands, and we'd use those same phrases later on for relay games in the afternoon. One of the groups involved exercise type stuff, and the other was just movement.

Well, I ran the exercise group one first. They laughed as they did sit-ups, hopped on one foot, did arm circles, jumping jacks, etc. Then, the next group also went fairly well. We did movement like move over, walk forward, walk backward. Then we got to "Stand up." For some reason, that was the point of no return this morning! One boy stood up and said, "Sexy pose" and put his hand on his hip and the other hand in the air. Three other boys collapsed in giggles and did the same thing. 5 of them were chanting "sexy pose! sexy pose!" (but of course, it came out sounding like "seh-kusee poh-zoo"). I tried to quickly move to the next card that read, "Close your eyes." How hard could that be, right?! Well, one boy took that to mean, "my eyes are closed so I have to feel with my hands." I'll let you all have one guess to figure out what he reached out to feel on me....yeah...

So, while I stepped back mortified, I looked at the group past mine hopping on one foot, and the kid who has been trouble-maker since minute one of camp was hopping around on one foot and kicked another kid nearby (not an accident at all!). I saw the kicked kid get the look of pure anger on his face, and he planted his feet, got into a stance, kicked the kid in the stomach hard, and followed up with fast jab (in the arm, thankfully not the face!). The counselor missed it all, so I had to quickly separate the two before it escalated, sit them down, and then figure out what to do with the rest of the group. They went to their desks and did a word search while I caught my breath. ACK! I honestly felt right then that I would not be coming back next year! But, of course, the girls this afternoon were angelic (besides one girl who complained that I was strict because I asked her to rewrite something in English!) and the boys were actually pretty subdued and did what they were supposed to do in class (but they did not get to do games!). So, the jury's still out on that one. I really don't have a sense of how to do games with them without them getting out of control! Did I mention that there are 19 of them?!

Tonight, I wanted to get out of the house and didn't let the thunder and lightning stop me! I was planning on going shopping so it wasn't like I was going to be walking around outside in the rain! I went one stop over to go to a 5 level shopping center. I started off with sushi at a restaurant at the bottom level. It was a conveyor belt sushi place (not boats but similar concept), and I enjoyed eating tuna, crab, and eel. It was actually fairly inexpensive, too (680 yen for dinner- about $7). From there, I did a little shopping and bought some stickers for the girls and other little things here and there.

I'm going to head to bed soon. I felt slightly better today and the cough isn't as painful, but I'm not very close to feeling 100%. I'm beginning to feel like I should get one of those masks to wear on the trains since I get funny looks every time I cough (and you've probably heard what my coughs can sound like!)