graduation

Today was graduation day for our kindergarten classes, and I can say with some truthfulness that I will miss each and every one of them that is moving on to elementary school next year. Wuss that I am, I even cried when it was all over. All these parents were trying to take pictures of me with their children and here I am bawling like a big baby. Phoo on me.

In any case it all went off without a hitch, and the parents really seemed to enjoy the ceremony. There was much picture-taking, clapping, and laughing fun to be had by all. As I was with the Kindy Performance so again was I the MC with another Korean co-teacher for the ceremony today. I always feel like some kinda celebrity when I get to do stuff like that, and it seems to happen quite often around this place...not that I mind.

The kids who are returning for a second year in kindergarten have this next week off, but the other teachers and I will still be working regular hours getting ready for all the new kids who will be joining our classes. Already today we stripped all of the classroom walls bare and are going to redecorate them before orientation for the new students on Monday. Hopefully we'll get it all done in time...but then again we do have all of tomorrow and Friday.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to go with my roommate Erin to the Immigration office once again because supposedly we didn't get our degrees verified like we were supposed to when we first got to Korea. I could have sworn that stuff was already taken care of way back when, but apparently not (though we did manage to somehow get our visas in spite of that fact...how odd). Our director, Ms. Cha is driving us there in the morning, though I'm not sure if she'll be waiting with us or if she'll just have us take the subway home when we're finished doing whatever it is we need to do there. Either way, it's all good. Being out and about in the morning will kinda break up the monotony of spending all day inside preparing the classrooms for the new semester.

This weekend I'm supposed to go with a friend of mine to this wedding of a friend of his. It's one of those "foreign guy marries a Korean girl" things. It's going to be this grand traditional Korean wedding, which is actually being held outside in a temple. Should be an interesting time. I'm curious to see what the Korean version of a wedding is like...I hear they're quite the spectacle.

Do they throw bouquets at Korean weddings? Hmm...