::A Geek in Korea::

Excuse my messy desk, I had too many gifts to clean up.

This has been the absolute best teacher’s day ever. I met up with my old students at a Japanese pork cutlet and sushi shop near where we used to go to school. When everyone arrived, we got around to ordering food. We spent the better part of an hour talking about what we had been up to for the past two years since we last saw each other.

All of the students are in high school now. One of the girls is in a foreigner high school, the most elite of all schools, and she studies entirely in English. She is also learning French, and will travel abroad to France next year with her class. Another student went to the Philippines for a month to study. He said that while he was a freshman he could spend Teacher’s day off school, as a sophomore he wouldn’t be given the luxury. In fact, by the time he was a senior, he would be going to school seven days a week to study. One of the girls told me about life in Australia, and how she was doing since then. She gave me the cute light sensitive dancing statue on top of my computer. The other girl told me about what she had been up to since I last saw her.

It was really cool to see all of these student again. I don’t really know anyone in the high school age range. Once someone is too old to go to my school, I usually lose touch. All of these students are excellent English speakers, and we spent most of the time just talking. They were curious to know why I would want to study Chinese characters. They sort of looked at me like I was crazy when I told them I thought it was interesting.

I invited them to my school, since I had classes in the afternoon. Turns out that one of the girls had studied at my school previously before she met me. She said her teacher was "From Mexico." She asked me if they speak English in Mexico. I told her she must have had a bilingual teacher. When we checked the pictures of old teachers, it turns out that the teacher had a graduated from "New Mexico".

"There’s a NEW Mexico now, too."

Once my students had seen my new school, we took some more pictures outside and they left. I got a few messages later in the day from each of them that leads me to believe they had a good time. They went to a sticker shop and took pictures together. All of them wanted to hang out in the future, so I hope we will see each other occasionally on the weekends when everyone has time. Schedules being what they are, I’m pretty sure they are actually busier than I am most days.

The rest of the day, presents kept rolling in. I got everything shown in the picture above, plus two espresso coffee mugs (I don’t drink coffee, but I do need mugs at home), a slice of pizza, a jar of candy, two handkerchiefs, and two cute notes from kindergarten students. While I didn’t suggest anyone bring me anything, I did subtly remind everyone on Friday that today was Teacher’s Day. Specifically, I used our Grammar lesson, "I am going to…." to tell the students, "You are going to bring me something for Teacher’s day."

Okay, so it wasn’t so subtle. I made sure they knew it was a joke before I let them go, but it seems to have worked.

Anyway, my wife, who is also a teacher, got several roses, a roll cake as long as my arm, and various boxes of fruit. It’s been a good hall this year. Not a single pair of socks yet. I’ve still got tomorrow’s classes to see if anyone will bring me anything to add to my total. Thank you everyone! It makes me feel great to be at teacher when I see everyone’s appreciation.