Simple Past - a grammatical reference, used to express a completed action that took place at a specific moment in the past; First and most basic English grammar lesson for German school children.
Each camp produces a ‘camp magazine’, covering life at camp, silly photos, anecdotes and interviews with each counselor by one of the older kids. A flavour of mine from week 3:
(I: Interviewer W: WaWa)
I: What was your first wordW: “Waaaaa”. That was why they named me WaWa.
I: What was your favourite animal? W: a drop bear
I: What is dat?W: I knew you would ask that. It’s an animal that lives in the tree. No one’s ever actually seen them because they are very cunning. They drop down from the trees when you are not paying attention and steals your hat, especially if it knows that you’ve been a naughty child.
I: What was your favourite colour?W: It was beigo. Ie. a mixture of indigo and beige.
I: That sounds yuck.W: No its not!
I: What were you afraid of when you were young?W: Nothing. I picked up snakes and mice and lizards and stuff like that from the garden just to scare my grandmother. Oh actually, I was afraid of haircuts. Haircuts sucked.
I: How would your parents describe you when you were young?W: …a goofball. Everything was a joke.
I: Who was your favourite person in your family?W: My great-grandfather. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease by the time I was about 3 or 4, but I remembered him as being the most gentle, relaxed and happy old man. He always had the same outfit – white T-shirt, grey pants, and brown sandals, and really thick black rimmed reading glasses, but in the summer he would just be bare chested. He was bald but had the purest white hair around the sides, and had a beer belly that was pale and full of moles, and I used to pat it and said he was pregnant with my next grand uncle. He had a favourite seat at home, and he read a lot and wrote little notes to himself in little cryptic scribbles. I liked to boss him around a bit actually, and take him for walks around the street and he would sing marching songs in Japanese.
I: When did you have your first kiss?W: Ahem... I was five at kindergarten. I played Snow White in the class play and the boy who played Prince Charming kissed me. We went out for about 3 days after that and then it fizzled out.
I: What was your best memory about primary school?W: Thinking back, it was all fun really. The school I went to in Taipei was huge, 6 storey compound kinda place that housed something like 5000 pupils, and exploring it was like a maze. There was one time where the Principal’s personal assistant beheaded a chicken outside her office and drained the blood into a lunch box, that was really amusing. I am sure that a B-grade movie that came out in the 90s was based on her.
I: What was the most craziest thing you did at high schoolW: Me and my best friend Brenda dressed up as The Two Tenors (Pavarotti and Domingo) for a lipsyncing competition and WON. And once I dressed up as a yellow robot for sports day. The robot was really ugly and my mother was so embarrassed she almost wouldn’t let me in her car. Oh and I wrote a letter to my favourite cricket player declaring my undying love for him but he never wrote back to me.
I: Were you heart broken?W: Of course. Can we not talk about this anymore?
I: Did you go to bed on time?W: Of course not.
I: Did you ever run away from home?W: Yes. Twice.
I: What did you want to be when you grew up?W: An astronaut.
I: What happened?W: I was bad at maths.
I: What would be one piece of advice you have for the campers about growing up?W: Don’t – its boring. But always eat your vegetables. You’ll find out soon enough that McDonalds taste like crap compared to real food.
