Foreign Exchange Students

Okay, so first I have to say that we are the foreigners here in Korea.  I never thought that we would be able to host exchange students while living here, but I was wrong.  Pete got an email at work asking military families to participate in the Good Neighbor Program.  This program invites Korean high school students to stay with American families for a week while attending the high school on the Army post and participating in other American activities.  We jumped on the chance.

On Mother's Day last year Kristine and Oyun became part of our family for the week.  

They are two of the sweetest teenage girls I have ever met.  We absolutely LOVED having them stay with us.

We introduced them to some of our favorite American family games.

Settlers of Catan...

 ...and Mario Kart

We asked the girls if they liked to play these types of games with their families, but soon found out there isn't much time for playing when you are a Korean teenager.  These poor girls go to school around 5:30am and don't return home until close to midnight.  All their meals are eaten out or at school.  There is no family dinner.  While their school day isn't that long, it's what they do after school that is so time intensive.  They go from school to hagwon after hagwon.  (Hagwon's are private, after-school classes that provide instruction in anything from math and science, to history, to music, or even exercise.)  This is the culture here in Korea.  Every parent wants their child to be the best.  The competitive nature of the education system has led parents to believe that working their children as hard as they possibly can will give them the greatest opportunity for success.  

This comic is, sadly, very true for these children...

These kids are amazing.  I'm not sure I, as an adult, could handle their schedules.  These girls have so much information in their heads, it is impressive.  When we talked about math, they both said it wasn't their strong point.  However, both of them could count by pi, cosine, sine, and tangent.  Yes, you read that right.  They could, off the top of their head, count by each of these.  Pi for example:  3.14...6.28...9.42.  I was shocked.  This is because they aren't allowed to use calculators.  Not even for upper level math like trigonometry or calculus.  I was beyond impressed.  

We spent the rest of the week doing fun American things.  We took them miniature golfing...

...and bowling...

 ...including some good old greasy food at the bowling alley.  

We even gave them very American Candy Posters.

They had never seen anything like these before.

They said this week was one of the easiest weeks of their lives.  It was great for me too, because they could help me with my Korean homework!

The last day, we met up with all the girls' families and all the other families who were part of the Good Neighbor Exchange Program for a picnic.

We had such a fun time with the girls, I didn't want to give them back.  This is definitely something we will do again next year!