Playtime Ends Today

Today was the 59th graduation day at Onsin Elementary. I sat next to the new Special Education teacher and she filled me into what was going on. And with only 21 graduating students it was a lot of, "Our school is so small so this is special." Each kid won a scholarship and a different award that in larger schools maybe two or three kids per class would end up getting.

Our school also has a rock band that played a few songs. The little girls singing are from first and second grade who had some of the cheesiest dance moves around gaining extra ahhs from all the grandmothers. Then it was the turn for the sixth graders to rock out in their hanboks. They had their moms come up to lead a song in the kids' honour. It wasn't pretty but luckily our assistant principal is a goof so he got the whole room swaying along as the fifth graders used as seat fillers are showing.


I slept through most of the ceremony inside but was told the kids bowed to their parents and several boring speeches were given. We headed outside where balloons appeared and the kids, in between posing for pictures, flocked to. The kids were angels around their parents and grandparents becoming particularily shy about using their English. This of course lead me to peppering them with questions just to embarrass them for my own selfish entertainment. I love seeing noisy clowns tamed into upstanding polite individuals.


One kid told me the balloons were for them to attach a piece a paper to. On this paper the kids had written their dreams for the future and at the sound of the gong they all released them in hopes of the future (a polluted balloon infested forest kind of future).


This last picture is of me with four of the five bad boys in the class. Week one at school before I learnt their names I gave them each a number, Bad Boy 1 through 5. They did turned out to be pretty good kids once they learnt my rules. I was bugging them today because a couple of them used some hair products for the first time this year and came to school with new hairdos. I wanted to bug them about the pink in their hanboks but somehow Koreans are able to pull this colour off just as well as Don Johnson. They all looked good today and made my grade six grad (there wasn't one) look even worse. But they do need to celebrate because life as they know it has ended. From now on until University there is no more playtime.