Mind. Blown.

Today is the first day of kindergarten!!!

This is, of course, exciting in and of itself, but it also means NO MORE RECORDING!!!

In my mind, the Harlem Gospel Choir sang a stirring rendition of Handel's Messiah to celebrate the end of the recording era.

Anyways.

Some law passed in Korea that changed how our kindergarten works. For kids that are 7 years old (Korean age, so really 5 or 6), they are now required to go to Korean school as their primary education. So now, these kids come to EOS (my school) for a couple of hours in the afternoon instead.

Which I am not thrilled about.

My primary class is 7 years old-- GO SEALION!!!-- so I essentially have giant breaks in the morning. Which is obnoxious.

Especially when you understand what I'm giving up to have these dinky morning breaks where I camp out in the computer room trying to convince Internet Explorer 6 that it IS in fact compatible with Facebook.

Note: it's not, unless you consider 30 seconds of timeline followed by a crash "compatible".

So this new break situation is a major downgrade.

7 year old kindergarten is now during what used to be our salvation, the mid-day break. It was the perfect amount of time to take a nap, shower, go to the grocery store, do the laundry, paint your nails, watch 3 episodes of Friends...

A very productive time.

Anyways.

The 7 year olds don't start until Friday, so today was just with my "sister class", Tuna.

Their primary teacher is one of the new Korean teachers. Her name is Jackie and I'm pretty sure she thinks I should be committed.

... She has a point.

They're 6 years old (again, Korean age), and for some of them, this is the first time they've ever been to school. We had a couple of criers this morning, thank GOD it was on a break. We all know how well I deal with crying children (see: http://ruhrohrok.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-not-deal-with-blood-geyser-in.html).

But they're adorable. They were all wearing their little blazers and button downs and plaid school uniforms looking like minature grown ups and I about died when I walked in from sheer cuteness overload.

I'm certainly not saying that they were a bunch of kittens in party hats but I just wanted you to get an idea of the scale of preciousness I'm dealing with here.

The bad news is that they basically speak no English.

We spent an hour learning the following:

• "My name is ____"
• "What class are you in?" (me) "Tuna class" (them)
• Stand up
• Sit down
• Push in your chair
• Line up

Which, when typed out seems like a lot, but really it was mostly them learning to recognize my cracked out pantomimes.

ANYWAYS.

What this post was supposed to be about is my mind being blown.

Which it is.

I just can't believe that kids who literally don't even know their own names of the first day of school will be able to read and speak in relatively complete sentences in just a YEAR!

My sister class last year was the same age group and about the same level as the kids I have now, and they can read and have conversations and make jokes and understand rules to games and all sorts of other things.

One would hope they'd be able to, given the fact that they're in an English school, but still.

I never saw Jellyfish class at the beginning of the year; I only saw them when they were like halfway through and I have to say that as much as I complain about my school, it turns out that the kids really do learn their English!

Go team!