Crazies in the House

Once a week I have a playdate.  2 little girls come hang out at my house (a good excuse to have to clean up, wouldn't you say??!) for an hour and we make stuff, and we stamp stuff, and we colour everything that has a white space on it, and for the most part we just talk about nothing important and play.

Their moms are trying to convince me to start a homestay educational program once I get back to Canada... me: house mamma to a bunch of Korean kids.  Huuunnnh????

Mothers used to accompany their children overseas for a year at a time, leaving Dad and the other kids behind (and sometimes just Dad stayed home) while everyone else went off and got appropriately Englished. This (as any sane person might imagine) was incredibly hard on marriages, and in a culture where visiting room salons (bar-like places where your boss/company pays for hourly female company for all of the hardworking men) is commonplace, it was also destructive for marriages.  These days (the moms tell me), parents are more likely to send their kids off on their own for a year or two while taking a month maybe to go and see them each year.

On Saturday afternoon I meet my friend KiJeong for lunch (I taught her daughter in kindergarten in 2006 and we kept in touch while I was away), and she asked me if I'd consider taking her 10-year old daughter for a year.  Sunday afternoon that my former student's mom Ana (who has only recently become my friend, it's her daughter Sandy that comes over to play on Tuesdays) called me for "coffee" and dropped her idea of a business proposal into my lap, giggling and saying "Well of course this is really what I wanted to meet you about, teacher"... sheesh, and here I was thinking she just wanted to get out of the house and go for coffee!!  :)

So long story short, the moms like me, trust me, and want to have a safe place to send their babies for English education and cultural exposure.  Ana (who lives in a very affluent neighbourhood and is a brand-name princess) has lit up her neighbourhood with the suggestion that she has a teacher friend who might take kids - she swears I could easily start a business with 4 kids a year staying with me as soon as I gave her the word go...

Oddly?  I'm considering it. 

I think I could make a viable business of it, and I think I would even like it!!  However, it will require much in the way of research and planning, and I know so little at this point that all I'm able to tell them is "I'm thinking about it!".  They don't like that answer, so I have a weekly coffee date with them too on Sundays so they can talk more and try to push me to say yes sooner - Korean mommies are a weee bit pushy when they want something from you, hahaha, but I adore them so we chat, I get overly excited about the whole thing, and they cross their fingers and toes and hope that it might actually happen.

Jury's still out... like I said, much research needs to be done, and I need to get MYSELF settled into life back home before I could think about taking kids into my life and my home. 

I am seriously considering it though... life is interesting!