It's a Small World After All

So today Karmen and I officially met the last student from the morning kindergarten kids we teach. This young girl had been gone for a couple months on a vacation with her family. She was on a class list but until today she was the mystery girl...

This morning as we were embarked on our 2 minute walk to the school, a little girl was really staring at us from the street and her mother said "Hi" to us from a distance. We thought it was a little strange but let's face it we do stand out here for a few reasons: our white skin and our height to name a couple. When we arrived at the school, we put the pieces together and figured out that this was the mystery girl. The mother and the girl were very excited to meet us, the new English teachers at the school.

We started talking to the mother and found out that her family had recently returned to South Korea from Canada. Obviously, we asked them where they had visited and we expected to hear the common answer, Toronto or Vancouver. At least having spent the last 5ish years in Abbotsford, we can tell people we lived close to Vancouver. Her answer surprised us..."We were in Saskatchewan" she said. I smiled and told her that I grew up there.

She could not believe it; she was so excited that I was from there. She kept on talking about how great it was there, how friendly the people were and how much fun they had. She has a brother studying English at the U of S, as well as other family there She told us how she wants to study English there as well. Then, she showed us pictures of the places they had visited and stayed. We saw pictures of the Saskatoon farmer's market, Blackstrap, a Lawson Heights park and strawberry fields. For the rest of the day  (we saw her a couple more times), when she saw me she would say Saskatchewan very loudly and excitedly. She LOVED Saskatchewan. For the first time since we came to South Korea, I wasn't just proud to be Canadian, I was proud to be a Saskatchewanian!!!