It's finally next week, and kids are the best

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“The soul is healed by being with children.” ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It's been 7 months since the last post, so a personal apology to everyone that I kept saying "Yeah, I'll post next week." At long last, it is next week. Hehehe. 

I've been thinking a lot about kids lately. It makes sense probably, because that's who I spend easily 80% of my conscious life with. If you count the times they pop up in my dreams you can move that up 5%. 

When I first came to Korea the part I was actually most worried about was the kids. I had been in college for 5 years, and then on a mission before that. My youngest siblings weren't super super young anymore, and living out of state I didn't interact with them very much. There had been a time I was super comfortable around kids. I would know all the kids at my church, a lot of the kids at the local library clubs, and I was not at all afraid of babies or little little ones. 

But at 27 years old, I didn't feel anywhere near as confident as the 17 year old me had been. It'd been years since I had taken care of babies, longer since I had played pretend or seriously interacted with a kid I wasn't related to. In all honesty, I felt really awkward around kids. And here I was going into a profession where my daily life would revolve around them. 

The chances of it turning into a really bad idea seemed pretty good to me. 

Looking at 2 years into this, I have decided to present the results of that potentially really bad idea:

Pretty sure they were doing my hair in this picture...

     
My baby sister has a fan club, and I'm apparently 128 years old...

Chuseok (Thanksgiving) they did ghost faces....your guess is as good as mine.

I think we enjoyed walking on the tracks more than the kids did, hehe.

The Shayla Tr and BTS Jin ship reached fan art level, easily my biggest accomplishment of 2021.

The creepy tunnel was redeemed by the hologram flowers, plus a glimpse at one of my cutest reindeer.

Halloween...I was supposed to be Belle, no one believed me.

As far as my potentially bad ideas are concerned, this was probably one of the best. Here's to all the little ones who teach me so much everyday. I hope 2022 brings them all that they need, and enough of what they want. 

-Shayla Teacher


Comments

  1. Jared DanielsonJanuary 2, 2022 at 1:12 AM

    Neat post, Shayla! It is great to see a new one. And yes, fun to reflect on the difference you have made to so many children.

    ReplyDelete

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