Thursday, March 20, 2014

I've lived a clockful of years!


Today's blog music is the wedding song we will be singing for a friend's wedding this weekend. The lyrics are really beautiful, especially the second verse, I think. Please enjoy Give Yourself To Love by Kate Wolf.


My brother pointed out to me the other day that this birthday was special for me because I have lived as many years as there are hours on the clock. This is definitely cool, because somehow it makes me feel like this next year can be like "a new day." It's past midnight now, and I'm heading towards a new morning.

See what living in the land of cutesy has done to me? I am getting a little cheesey, I think. But I'm feeling more optimistic these days.

Turning a year older is a perfect time to reflect on the days of yore though. Today in the teacher's office we talked about saving up for stuff as kids and how some of us were better at it than others. My one success as a child for saving up for something big was an American Girl doll...which got Kate and talking about our favorite games to play with our dolls. Kate joins the group of us who played less house related games with our dolls and more "escape from the villians" or the myriad of "we are orphans in dire circumstances including perhaps all of our limbs are broken" type games.

What is it with children and pretending to be orphans? how morbid is that. We were so weird.

But then, my students remind me of the weirdness of children every day. Today in my 4:30 class, Susan and Eileen and Cindy discussed being sick and how the yellow dust in the air (thanks China!) was maybe a reason for why Susan was feeling a little sick. I told them that Anna was feeling a little sick too, in her nose, so maybe she had breathed too much dust too.

They then proceeded to draw a giant nose on the board with cavernous nostrils and tell me that "Teacher if Anna teacher's nose is this big then there will be a lot of dust inside and maybe a tree." Then they added a cute little pine tree inside the left nostril. So be careful Anna, you don't want to accidently grow a tree inside your nose. The ENT downstairs might be stumped by that one....

Other neat things in my classes has been a successful (so far) restorative discipline meeting with my troublesome 5:30 class. Jae and Yoonseo and all the interns came to my classroom, so the adults were outnumbering the kids by far. Pretty intimidating, but I think that was exactly what was needed. They just have had repeated behavior problems and just weren't taking the problem seriously. It ended up being really good and they were able to come with a list of promises that they wanted to help each other keep and we posted it on our classroom wall. I have seen some improvement, and I know they will need reminding, but it was so good to see that they were finally taking class seriously. Huge answer to prayer!

This weekend we are headed to Gangneung, Yoonseo's hometown for Sarah Jill's wedding. Sarah used to word with NARPI and did some substitute teaching for Connexus too. We have the great honor of singing her wedding song, which you can listen to in the link I posted at the top. We are also having a staff retreat, the first since the addition of three new KOPI interns. I'm excited to have some time to get to know everyone better.

Two of the interns, Minjung and Hyesun are doing a language exchange with Anna and I. We are meeting on Wednesday nights to have conversation in Korean and English and check each other's journals; Anna and I will write in Korean and Minjung and Hyesun will write in English. I am really excited to get the chance to practice Korean and become better friends with people we're working and living alongside. Minjung is actually in my cooking group on Mondays and also goes to Grace and Peace church with us.

I'm still collecting quotes, so instead enjoy some little updates from the community. Thanks for reading!

Community News:

* After spending many great months with us, Juhee decided it was time for a change, and so now we have a new grammar teacher, Jiyoung Park, who is just lovely and is great to have in the office! I'm looking forward to getting to know her better too as she is taking Juhee's place as one of my cooking partners as well.

* On March 17, I made omurice for lunch and let it be known to all that Omonim said that it was delicious and I did well. I wrote it on my calendar.

* One of my friends from Messiah is coming to Connexus to teach! Michaela, I am so pumped!

2 comments:

  1. Glad it's all good, by and large. Worried a bit about Anna though, and her runny nose. Hope it's temporary, an inflammation or some other, and doesn't proclude anything more. Though it would be best if you make sure :)

    Aurora DX

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  2. Thanks for the update Abby! Sorry I'm terrible at communicating. I might try writing you a snail mail letter this weekend. Glad you're feeling better. Mercy is trying her own hand at "teaching" today in co-op. She seems really excited. Maybe the longs just have a "teaching gene". You have to ask her about it.
    Daddy

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