I mentioned in another thread last week that I am spending a couple weeks teaching at a conversational English camp here in BG. Only about a third of the campers are Bulgarian - the rest of them are from various other countries, but the biggest group of non-BG people are the twenty-eight kids from Montenegro, the world’s youngest country. (It just celebrated one year of independence from Serbia in May.)
The reason I feel moved to post about them is that their patriotism and love of country is so…well, moving. In a class where I asked them about their favorite day ever, several of them answered without hesitation, “21 May 2006, the day we have our own country”. They have repeatedly invited all of us teachers to come and visit, showing us pictures of their beautiful seaside and waxing as poetical as they can in English about how much they love their country. All of us want to go visit now! Seriously, these kids are just too cute. I think it’s so affecting because patriotism in the US always seems so loaded with possible ulterior meanings. Lord knows we’ve argued about it enough on the SDMB, y’all know what I’m talking about. These kids are completely sincere. It’s just…refreshing, and I thought I’d share it with you all.