A glimpse into young Korean minds

Every Monday I (Jo) correct book reports for my K8 class. They have now been at our school for 3 years and are able to express most of their ideas in English, grammatical errors not withstanding. This is the book report I just marked from one of the boys in this class. The book was about African arts and crafts.

"Africa people are strange because they is painting on the wall. I don't like Africa people because they are skin is black. I like white people Jo teacher. but I like beads."

Just a little sample for all of you to ponder back home. This is the attitude commonly held by most of the children and obviously by most of their parents. Now I don't think that Tommy would wish harm upon any African American, but he would certainly tell them that their skin is too dark and choose someone else to be friends with on that basis. It's like looking back on history. They are just a bit behind the rest of the world in common perceptions, or maybe it's just me being naive and thinking that a child back home wouldn't say the exact same thing.

It certainly doesn't help that they never see black people except on TV, where they are most commonly portrayed as drug dealers or bad guys in general. I can honestly say that I have only seen a handful of black people since arriving 7 months ago. I have seen easily over 100 white ones, and probably more, but they don't stand out as much for me, in contrast to the sea of yellow and white we work in.

Anyway, this week is a dream at work, 2 sciences, a field trip and a manners class for the graduating children, which equals a very light work load for me. Next week I imagine that there will also be a lighter workload as the children will be practicing for their graduation ceremony and once we finish our books there will be nothing new to move onto.

We are eagerly awaiting Jacqui's arrival and the gifts from home that she is bringing with her; like razor blades for Lucas and spices for me (yay chili powder!!!). It's down to only 2 weeks now and they are going to fly right by, as they always do anyway. This weekend is the lunar New Year here, so we have next Monday off, but since there is nothing really interesting to do with only 3 days, we're planning on having a very relaxing long weekend spent at home most likely.

Our new place is as Lucas said, quite nice and very functional. Not having an oven sucks, but if we end up staying the extra 5 months, we'll probably splurge, and aside from the noisy construction workers who start little before 8 every morning, weekends included, there are no problems. The landlord even put weather stripping around the door yesterday, and once the other buildings in the neighborhood go up we might even get street lights! Plus we have a rooftop that we can get to here, which will be nice come the summer, and somewhere to hang out in the sun, my plants will love their time up there in full sunlight too.

Hoping that everyone back home is having a nice Valentine's Day and enjoying the last of the snow. It sounds like it's supposed to warm up for you soon. We're already almost into the double digits everyday and just barely dipping below freezing at night right now. I'm pretty sure all chances for snow have passed and this will be remembered by us as the year without snow.

Our love to everyone back home, please keep in touch, and I promise to keep working on Lucas about the memory card.