Post-Finals | Showing Our Appreciation For Our Main Seonsaengnim

EARLIER THIS MORNING:

Earlier this morning: Our seonsaengnim opening our humble gifts in class. The pricelessness of his expressions of gratitude is compounded, for me, by Tara's laughing face.

We have some incredibly organized people in our class that put their heads and hands together to create a memorable thank-you/goodbye party for our main seonsaengnim (teacher). We pooled some money together and, as a class, presented these final thank-you gifts for the amazing instructor who has been with us these past six weeks.

He has been incredibly patient, organized, perceptive of our needs, and funny - there are many reasons to love him! When he saw that we were about to present him with gifts, he started shaking his head sharply and looked almost displeased or embarrassed that we had bothered to give him gifts. We insisted that he open his box and, seeing that we weren't going to leave him alone, began to smile and slowly take out each item from the box: candy, chocolates, whiskey (?), and some other things the other ETAs thought were fitting gifts for the seonsaengnim.

LATER THIS EVENING:

Later this evening: Our class treating our seonsaengnim to spicy BBQ chicken and a variety of pizza!

We were going to take him out to dinner tonight, but he had a lot of Final Exam grading left to do so we settled for ordering these delicious American food to Jungwon. Seonsaengnim's favorite food is spicy chicken, apparently, so that's what we ordered. Thankfully, there was one side of the box with non-spicy chicken, so I was able to enjoy really crispy, really delicious fried chicken!

The pizza was also delicious. There were pizza flavors I had never even dreamed existed (like spaghetti-flavored pizza!). The one I had four slices of was so delicious I didn't even have time to ask what flavor it was!

As we ate, a couple of ETAs played the role of DJ and mixed Abba, and K-Pop songs over the speakers. Seonsaengnim had a special request though, so we ended up also listening to his favorite artists. They sang sad-sounding songs very, very well and changed the class party atmosphere rather quickly.

Already, I am thinking back to the six weeks with nostalgia. My class and my instructor(s) have been wonderful companions in this journey.