It's been a pretty intense two years, I basically had no life because I packed their academic schedule to the max, (Japanese, English along with a pretty intense music schedule too), and now looking back, I'm not sure if I would have do it again, as hindsight has it, it's 20/20 now, and without going into too much here, I think as a parent, I lost steam along the way: the constant help I needed with translation, finding tutors, dealing with Japanese parents that were always willing but unable to communicate everything to me, the stress of not knowing Samuel's basketball practices and games (that was a CRAZY experience!! many close calls of calling the police because I couldn't find my son after practices and games) and kids stressing to learn Japanese but then lagged in English all became very taxing....BUT, after much reluctance and stressing over to keep the last two kids in school for the next 2 months was a very hard decision because finally, they got over the hump with their language skills, and finally, Ellie had made friends in school and was also motivated in studying Kanji (She was already doing 3rd grade Kanji), and NOW I pulling them out was probably the most heart wrenching thing I did as a parent... and it doesn't stop here, because now we are going to live in a small town, where there probably won't be a Japanese program for them to keep up with, another problem... In my moment of insanity, I asked Seung if we can drive three hours every Saturday to Dallas so they can go to the Japanese school there. He just looked at me and didn't respond...Ah, the stress of the frantic mother who wants everything for her children and stresses now about how to keep up their Japanese after we leave. This is a new problem in itself.
New season, new month, so finally: Here are my children finally enjoying their time in Korea. I took them on a trip to Korea after their Japanese school year was over this month. (They are now on the American schedule), so they still have "homeschool" work now, which is essentially english, history, and math.
Overall, the Japanese school experience was such a rich time of learning that every situation was a "grateful and new" experience for them. Situations like bullying, (which happened more than I expected), lunch etiquette, teacher-parent conference, inviting Japanese friends to our "American" home, and meeting other Japanese parents were unique experiences that I would never trade. IN this sense, I love that we have the opportunity to live in other countries. This is how I define experiencing another culture: not just reading, eating and learning about them, but living, breathing and interacting with them so closely that we learn to broaden our mind to embrace the other culture's beauty and etiquette, and I believe my kids have achieved it.
As I try to tie up loose ends with my time here, I am trying to launch our next season's prints. Stay tune to hear more about what's going on with the Paik family!
