korea

It felt like we were reliving the first day of the school year, when students and teachers do the get-to-know-you dance__eachers tell students something about who they are, students pretend to care, and then vice-versa.

A son for a flag is a lot of sacrifice.

Teaching isn__ rocket science. It__ about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don__ need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what__ best for them.

I felt a hand on my back, movement behind me, my guys making room, someone squeezing into our circle, and then one last hand joined the pile: my Korean aide. I guess it made sense. We were her real family. The closest thing she__ ever had to a real family, at least. All year she said maybe five words a day. 'Now kick some ass,' she said.

There are more good people than bad people, and overall there__ more that__ good in the world than there is that__ bad. We just need to hear about it, we just need to see it.

It was too late to pray, though. The sky was clear. The helicopters were gone. Too late for so many things. My fists hit the floor. My head hit the floor. My heart broke, hardened, and I lost my faith. That__ when the killing thoughts came. When it felt right to punish everyone who let this happen. I could start with Angel__ dad__ut where would it stop?

Korea is often called the __and of the Morning Calm._ It__ a country where you notice the filth and the smog on your first trip and you can__ imagine why you ever thought it was a good idea to visit. Then you meet the people and you walk among their culture and you get a sense there is something deeper beneath the surface, and before you know it, the smog doesn__ matter and the filth is gone__nd in its place there is incredible beauty. The sun rises first over Japan, and as Korea is waiting for the earth to spin, for streaks of light to brighten its eastern sky, in that quiet moment there is a calmness that makes Korea the most beautiful country in the world.

I stood with my mom in the cemetery. She felt terrible pain. My grandmother is with God. My mom has to continue living. It__ not so easy, moving forward.

I felt like I should salute. If only I knew how.

I needed to talk to my dad. My dad who had been to war, who had seen its horrors, who suffered from its nightmares, my dad who was a good man, the best man I__ ever known, who, along with my uncle, I wanted to honor by teaching military kids__y dad, the only one who I would believe if he would just tell me I could be good, too, that I could do right by my students, because for sure they were going to suffer. It__ just cause and effect. We__e at war. The military fights wars. I teach military kids. I__ never served, but now I could make a difference. I just needed my dad to tell me what to do, to tell me I was good enough to get it done.

Military life is hard, even cruel__specially for the kids.

This is who I was, before I was dead. When I cared, when I was relentless.

It__ be easy to blame everything on 9/11 or the wars that came after. It__ really about the choices we made. By necessity we adapt to the realities of the world we live in, but if we forget that how we live shapes and influences the world around us, then we__e already lost.

I__ clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have hope.

Sami and I had exactly one day together in the old world. On Tuesday the jihadists came to our front door and knocked down our buildings. Our new world was hijacked planes, anthrax, and Afghanistan. Then we had snipers inside the Beltway. Then came Iraq. With every military action we were told reprisals were not just probable, but a foregone conclusion. An intelligence officer with a fancy PowerPoint briefed teachers on __ur new reality._ He called us __argets._ He said __et used to it._ He told our Webmaster __et off your ass_ and remove bus routes/stops from the school__ website. Johnny Jihad would find that information especially helpful if he decided to plow through our kids one morning as they stood half-asleep waiting for the school bus.

Cope? Adapt? Uh, no. These are military kids. They roll with it. I once asked a new student, 'See any familiar faces?' She pointed out various kids and replied, 'Seattle, Tampa, Okinawa, New Jersey.' For military dependents school is literally a non-stop revolving door of old and new friends.

My closest friend at this time was my tiny pet dog - it was one of the cute little breeds that people in other countries put frocks on. I wouldn't have been allowed to do that, because putting clothes on dogs was a well-known example of capitalist degeneracy.

Farid asked, 'Do American teachers care about every student?'I thought about a humanities teacher I__ worked with in Korea and more recently a science teacher I__ worked with in Germany. I said, 'I think most schools have a resident idiot.