KgtK 13 (the last one): In the gray.

So tonight is my last night in Korea, but I'm going to blog about something I put on a list things to blog about.

So I think I'm not thinking so much in Black and Whites anymore.

Example: My class was together for four hours every day for five weeks and we got to know each other pretty well, and in my case, they saw how hard I studied and how anal I was about attendance and homework. Right before we took exams, our teacher was going over the grading system and the standard is that there are five tests and if you fail one of them you fail all of them. Which sucks for me, because despite my best efforts, I failed both of our practice listening tests. So when I asked our teacher about it, she just looked sorry and said there wasn't anything she could do about it, but my class jumped into action. "Katy, just sit next to me, and I'll make sure you get enough right to pass."

So I immediately said what I always say in situations like these. "Oh, I don't cheat." And its true. But as soon as I said it I felt like a jerk. Were my classmates trying to lie? steal? kill? do anything to harm anyone? No. On the contrary, they saw someone who was working hard but lacked the background in Korean needed to pass an especially challenging listening test, and in a spirit of comradely offered to help me out. Even if I wouldn't cheat, replying with "Oh, I don't cheat." pretentiously taking the moral high ground when all they were trying to do is help is so jerky of me.

I think I have used Christianity as an excuses to say in the Conventional State of Kohlberg's stages of moral development, when really, being in a relationship with Christ, knowing Christ and his teachings, should give me the ability venture into Post Conventional ethics with out going off the handle or using the un-conventionality as an excuse to do things that are wrong.

For example, if I could go back I still wouldn't cheat, but I also would have thanked my classmates for their offer instead of not so subtly judging them for it.

(As an update, I didn't cheat, and I did fail. I actually failed worse on it then on the practices. (36%) On the other hand, I got the second highest score in my class on the writing section. Go figure.)

I think I wrote this tonight cause Flo's comment on my last blog about quite times. To be honest, I probably have had four or five traditional quite times my whole time in Korea. This would usually haunt me. But my spontaneous prayer has been going good, and I've been at such peace with G-d these last couple of weeks (which is a big change from my usually feeling of sourceless (or innumerably sourced) guilt.) So, I don't know what that is about, but I like it. I guess I need to learn to live a little more in the gray.

I go to Costa Rica tomorrow. I'm psyched to see the Bedenkops, but worried about the impending sporean I'm about to start speaking.

Also, heads up to my Chinese friends. I'm about to learn to read Chinese. (I bought a two books on Hanja today.) Not like that will mean much. Just thought you should know.