one thing i really wanted to do before i left korea was to go back to visit the kindergarten i worked at for my first year. so i stopped by just after lunch time on tuesday, january 30th. almost a year had gone by since i'd been over there and seen my old students, so i was expecting to see them all grown up and having changed a lot. i found that to me they hadn't grown all that much, but i was really impressed with how much their english had improved since then. obviously they'd been taught by better teachers since i left!

natalie and i started at the same time, but she elected to stay on there another year, but on that day was telling me about her next job at a university in korea. she's also a huge reason why women's rugby in korea even exists. yeri and sally i'd both taught back when they were the youngest students in the school. now they were in the highest level class and doing just great. they were always a joy to teach. sally used to be really shy, but now she seemed to be a lot more outgoing.

jiwoo and i always had a lot of fun when i taught her, so it was great seeing her again. her english was also amazingly better, natalie and i were reminiscing about funny things that had happened with her and see seemed to keep up with what we were saying. sara just blew me away though, i taught her when she first started and didn't know any english at all. i can remember teaching her the colors red, blue, yellow, and green. it would take almost the whole class for her to have it down, then the next day she would have forgotten them all. but now she was amazing, we had a whole conversation, it was very surreal.

it was a lot of fun seeing them all again, but a little sad to say goodbye knowing we probably wouldn't meet again. maybe someday in twenty years one of them will find this site and all the funny things i've been posting about their kindergarten days.

tagged: english kindergarten korea school students