"You didn't have therapy dogs?" I asked exasperatedly. This kept on happening. I always knew that my school was a little different from everyone else's, but in Korea, it just seemed like everything I said, even to Americans, was strange and unusual.

For instance, while many people might have had friend going to piano or guitar lessons; something as common as Jewish lessons from where I was from, is relatively unheard of elsewhere.

Apparently, other schools did not have advanced placement programs, a good ESL program, therapy dogs, drug dogs, (but of course parental permission slips for dissections), and pretty much every club that is national.

Other schools were not held up during choir while students argued with the teacher for a half an hour about why they should not have to sing classic christian hymns. At other schools, people were not given 'tolerance' lectures before anyone with a headscarf joined their class. At other schools, it is supposed to be MORE normal to actually be Christian than gay.

At other schools, you are not expect to know that it is: drug awareness week, holocaust awareness week, suicide awareness week, black history month (February) or women's history month (March).

In other schools, people are not finding the cure for cancer, AIDS and other illnesses. People are not programming their own games onto their calculators. People are not programming viruses and spreading them to the entire school. People are not taking college level art courses. People do not have their own studios. People do not have enough money to go to all the national music conferences. People are actually allowed to sing in the top choirs, even if they do not have perfect pitch. Apparently, in other schools, a 3.5 is actually a reasonably good score. 5.0s are impossible.

Despite the fact that I had so little control over it, this experience colors most of how I think about and understand the world. What about you? What makes your reality unusual?

Never heard of school-sponsored therapy dogs...
I can't decide if you liked those things about your school or not. Some of it seems pretty nice.
» middaymoon on 2011-01-26 12:08:29

well, welcome to the other side of the world.
» renaye on 2011-02-02 08:28:21

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