Teacher's Day

Recently, South Korea celebrated Children's day, Teacher's day, then Parent's day. Those are some wholesome values to install in a society if you ask me. This country and it's people have seriously altered my view on what life can be like. Especially families.

For teacher's day, my student Alice invited me and the couple I work with to her father's "sum-gip-sal" restaurant. It's mostly fried pig meat, but they made "kimchi bokembop" for me. (Fried rice w/fermented cabbage.) Of course, there were a zillion side dishes for us all to pick from and everything was delicious. My other student (Bruce) came with his mother b/c he and Alice are good friends. They're only 10 years old and had to translate the entire evening. They're very good at English and did a fine job. Alice's entire family was there and they treated us royally. People here appreciate their teacher's like you wouldn't believe. Her father goes scuba diving all the time for the seafood at his restaurant and has invited me to go sailing with them in July. Also, Bruce's mother drove us all home from the restaurant and offered to take us to dinner in the future. Bruce and I discussed a lot on the ride back; he's really into automobiles. And I asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up. I thought he'd said a police officer or soccer player in class. But he said, "I don't know." I said, "You don't know?" and he said, "I want adventure." That was a great feeling. He's too intelligent not to explore this world.

The other day in class I was going around the classroom asking, "What do you like to do?"

me: "Bruce, what do you like to do?"

Bruce: "ME? Really? Are you sure?"

me: "Yes."

Bruce: "I like to listen to music."

me: "And what does Sarah like to do?"

Bruce: "I don't know."

me: "She just said she likes to play basketball."

Bruce: "She's lying."