Highlights of my Day... Monday, March 2

1. Thoughts of Monday morning first period classes haunted me last night in my sleep and I woke up dreading the ever-so-routine brutal Monday morning first period class. I don't believe in luck and it's a good thing too cause I've never had any luck with scoring an interesting first class where the students show up early or on time and stay awake. The luck of the draw, and lack there of it, is that I've always ended up feeling like I'm pulling teeth every Monday at school.

2. "Just make sure you wear a dress shirt and it'll be OK" was Q's advice he gave me when I told him I wasn't looking forward to first period. So I wore a crisp white dress shirt, a pin-strip pencil skirt, a tuxedo-style vest, and I polished the outfit off with a pair of glossy looking black heels. I was dressed to impress but wasn't sure if Monday would be impressing me.

3. Much to my surprise, as I showed up early to set up for my first period class, I was greeted by a bunch of my last semester's students screaming my name... hahaha. They were like groupies in that they screamed out my name and ran up to me as I entered the class. This was definitely not the Monday morning first period class situation I was expecting and so I was thrilled at the surprise at how many of my previous students had signed-up for my course this semester. In my first period class I counted 8 returning students and so I was so incredibly happy. Monday mornings are going to rock from now on... for sure!!!

4. Second period class greeted me with more familiar faces and so I was all giddy like a school girl all over again. The first day at school had been a total success and running into so many of past students on campus just fed the natural high that my first period class had put me on.

5. My long winter break was nice but stepping back on campus today and stepping into those classrooms to do what feels so natural and so good to me reminded just how much I really do love teaching in Korea. I have been blessed yet again with so many amazingly beautiful students who make my job so worth it. Sometimes I have to laugh though, knowing I get paid to do this... paid to experience this awesomeness. And when I stood there in the classroom today, I seriously felt like there was no where else in this world that could possibly give me this sense of awesomeness, sense of belonging... now if only I could get my social life up to par with my work life.

6. Kicks kicks... that girl rocks! Am convinced Kicks is better than sliced bread after she emailed me a whole whack of info. to help me with teaching reading. I had mentioned to her the other day that I've never taught reading before and was quite unsure about how to approach it. Four emails later and a whole list of files later, I'm feeling quite comfortable and confident about it now, if not excited.

7. Coming home to celebrate my first day of classes alone was a bit depressing. With no one to sit and jabber on and on about how much fun my classes were and all the silly Konglish conversations I had with various students, I spilled my beans to Mi Nam. He politely sat there and let me ramble on but I doubt he caught all that I said... hahaha.

8. With classes being super short this week because of it being orientation week, I was done work before noon and so I had the whole afternoon and evening free. Headed off to boxing in the late afternoon and chatted up a storm with Junior Mint about my classes. I love it how he's so much more than my boxing coach. Today he acted as a kind of father or older brother to me, asking me a ton of questions about my first day back at school. It was nice.

9. Ran into one of my favourite UP members, a young high school student I call Sunny Boy. When I first started training at UP Boxing Club he was one of the first people I met. He was a plump young guy who was overly shy. He once mentioned to Junior Mint that he thought I was pretty and well, Junior Mint having a troublemaker slight streak in him, hasn't let that one go yet and so he's always teasing Sunny Boy about it, making him blush. It's been well over a year later since he and I first met. Sunny Boy is now in high school and is no longer the pudgy boy. He's still super shy though and you can see that his insecurities from his "more plump days" haven't left him. I think he's awesome though and I think his insecurities are what fascinate me about him. He is totally oblivious at just how cute he's become and how genuinely sweet he is. Last October (October 25th to be exact) I watched as his heart broke, literally speaking, in the ring at an amateur tournament. I knew exactly how he felt on that October 25th and while everyone was telling him that it was OK and not to cry, I was the only one that told him it wasn't OK but crying was OK. Consequently, since then our friendship has changed and so running into each other at training is always full of smiles and small talk. Today we had a bit of a friendly skipping contest. I argued that I hadn't really warmed up yet but he smoked me... hahaha. I still haven't mastered how to triple skip, dang.

10. As for the rest of the evening, I pretty much sat around trying to finish typing up my course syllabus for my reading class. This semester I'm teaching two different courses and so it'll be twice the work... twice the PowerPoint lecture files, twice the homepages to create and maintain, twice the midterm and final exams to think up, and twice the brain power required. I didn't finish my course syllabus but I did manage to create two new homepages for my students, one for my reading course and the other for the listening and pronunciation course.

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say "thank you"?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don't unravel.
-- Author Unknown