Striding down the hall, hunting for room 212, which had been turned into the office for the camp, I felt totally confident. My zipper was up, shirt buttoned, hair neatly braided in one long plait down my back; and the bookstore had sold white gym socks, which I charged to my mother, chairperson of YGU’s College of Language and Arts Department. I was ready for everyone, most of all the kids who will join the camp. I love working with energetic little ones.

“You must be Dara Park.”

A tall, good-looking guy with colored hair and intense eyes was standing in the doorway of the office.

“Choi Seung-Hyun?” I asked.

“Yup but you can call me Top,” the head counselor replied. His hair suited his name. I was shocked to see a not-so-old head counselor for the camp. From my experiences, middle-aged men or women were the head counselors. But this guy held the same aura as those that I’ve encountered before. He probably noticed my weird expression.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said smiling. “I might be young but I know my way around. I’ve been doing this  for years. I graduated here 3 years ago,” he explained. “Come in and meet the rest of the gang. Yo! Everyone, this is our fun-games and athletics leader for the camp.” He slammed his hand a couple of times on the wall like a boss. Whoa!

I stepped inside the door and stopped. The pretty girl I had nearly run over with my bike smiled quietly at me. “I’m CL,” she said.

“Minzy,” a young girl with streaky colored hair chirped in.

“Yoochun.” A guy with fine dark hair and eyes nodded at me.

“We’ve met,” said the counselor next to him.

I tried not to show my surprise. “Hi, Jae.”

He was smiling, always smiling. Does he ever get tired doing that?

“Terrific, folks. That’s great,” Top said, clapping his hands as if we had just done something remarkable by identifying ourselves. “Now let’s have some fun.”

We began our meeting talking about the kids. The camp held near YGU was a free day camp for first- through third graders, who are being bused from the inner city. Top, who had just graduated 3 years ago from YGU, had spent a lot of his summers in the kids’ neighborhoods and told us about their homes, their schools, their streets; it was all pretty bleak.

“Like all kids, they’re full of fun,” he said, his eyes distant for a moment, as if he were back in their neighborhoods. “But they’re desperate for attention. And they witnessed things in their own homes and streets that none of us would ever want to see.”

We discussed our goals for the four weeks of camp and some general procedures. Our day was divided into two periods before lunch and two periods after CL, a senior at YGU and a psychology major like Top, was hired as the reading and math tutor. Jae was the music and art counselor. I found out he had just moved to Seoul and was a senior like my sister should be (if she wasn’t pregnant) and myself; we’d both be going to YGU in the fall.

Minzy, who was freshman, was Top’s little sister and a volunteer. She’d monitor free play. I was in charge of sports and fun activities, of course. And Yoochun, a senior at the same school, was the Korean/ESL tutor; he would work all day on English/Korean language skills with the non-Korean kids assigned to him.

When the meeting was over, Top, arms swinging, bouncing along like a scout leader, led us to the driveway where our kids would be dropped off and picked up each day. A few minutes later a bus, alive with waving arms and legs, rocking with loud voices, pulled up to the curb.

It took some time to get the kids herded into the gym. This is just an opinion, but I think sheepdogs would have helped. Bathroom lines were formed. After that, name tags were given out. Top quieted the kids and talked about rules. Then we led the squirming troops to the cafeteria for an early lunch.

“I’m glad we had breakfast,” Jae remarked twenty minutes later.

Of the six counselors, only Top still had his appetite. Now I’d done plenty of baby-sitting and some coaching; I was used to being around kids. But I discovered that something happened when fifty-eight of them are together. They found a lot of ways to mangle their sandwiches and pancakes.

After lunch the kids were broken into their four groups – grades one, two, three and the Non-Koreans – and sent to each leader for shortened periods. I did fine with the first-graders, who, when separated from the pack, suddenly turned timid. We played a very polite game of Steal the Bacon. Then the third-graders came roaring in.

Many of them had lost or mutilated their name tags by then, and several decided they’d rather not tell me who they were.

“Okay, pals,” I said. “I’ll give you numbers. You’re 100, you’re 3, you’re 18, and you’re 76. Don’t forget.”

“I know their names,” volunteered a little girl whose hair was the same color as mine and tied up in two fussy ribbons. Hara. Her name tag was in perfect condition and probably would be four weeks from now.

“That’s Lee Joon,” she said, pointing to a kid with a fuzz of black hair in front of her.

“Is not.”

“Is so.”

Is not!”

“Is so!”

“Is 76,” I said firmly.

But Hara was determined to set us all right. “And that’s Sulli, that’s Mir and that’s Kevin.”

The kids glared at her. I felt like touching the tip of my nose, giving her the brownnoser sign, but then I remembered that I was the grown-up here.

I started organizing the kids for a game of Capture the Flag. Chasing one another on a big field would work off some of their extra energy, I thought. Then I saw Top coming down the hill from the student center, carrying a large box. A tall lady came with him, lugging another one. My 16 little darlings, recognizing Top as the camp’s head honcho, suddenly stopped spinning in circles, pulling up grass, and tying each other’s hair