My last day at Doryang!

Well, it has finally happened! Today was my last day at Doryang School. It felt just like a normal day really, we didn't have any parties or anything, but we definetly didn't work all that hard. Nothing out of the ordinary there really. I got my two younger classes to draw me pictures for my classroom in Buksam. The girls drew lovely pictures of me wearing crowns. Lots of hearts and flowers and "I Love You Krista Teachers" all over their drawings. I like my girls.

The boys were different...

I've never heard of a culture quite like Koreas. I mean, I know there are nationalistic countries out there, but Korea really has to come close to taking the cake. I've never before come across 8-10 year olds who know so much about world politics, or pretend that they do. It's normal for little boys to draw people blowing stuff up and violent pictures....I realize this. But for every boy in 2 classes to draw Canada and Korea blowing up Japan, China and Korea #2 (North Korea)? It's so embedded in them from such a young age that they're better than everyone else, espeically other Asian cultures. They're not taught anything else about other Asian cultures except that they are bad. Granted, the Japanese HAVE invaded Korea half a dozen times in recent history, and there WAS that big occupation the beginning of this century, but seriously. It just kinda freaks me out I guess...what kind of hating generation is being raised here?

They also don't understand why anyone would want to go outside of Korea. I told a Korean recently that I was planning on going to Japan. I was met with a started look and the question "why?!?!" They just don't get it. Why on Earth would anyone want to leave fabulous, wonderful Korea? Well, I personally can give you quite a few reasons off the top of my head without preparation....but that's just me.

Anyways, enough bitching. Back to the re-cap of my last day. So, we drew pictures and goofed off. I handed out Vancouver 2010 pins, Canada pins, Canada stickers and little Canadian flags. In my 6:40 and 7:40 class we studied for about half the class then goofed off and talked. In 8:40 we just played Scrabble. All in all, not a bad day.

I'll miss the kids for sure. My 4:40 class was sad, and I was sad to leave them. I got a really nice letter from one of the girls, she must have had help from someone else...I know for a fact that the sweet little phonics student didn't learn "Also, I really appreciate that you teach so many things to me and my friends" from me. It's nice to know that I'm loved, even though I know that they'll forget about me within the week! These kids go through so many teachers, they're used to people coming and going. I exchanged emails with the girls from my 7:40 class. They were pretty upset that I was leaving, Diana started to cry. I felt pretty bad, but I have to leave...there's really no way around it.

Anyways, I've posted some more pictures of the rugrats. I gotta get to bed, it's 1:30 already and I have the orphanage in the morning!! Cheers all!