Long, Eventful Week

It has been an interesting week. On Sunday, my pastor announced the next mission trip to Nepal, where our church runs a children's home and does a lot of outreach work. I have always wanted to go on these trips, but my school doesn't give me time off for something like that. The next trip is over the week of Chuseok in September. My school happens to only have one day of class that week, and it will be the first week of my new contract after I resign, so I thought I had a chance of getting that day off. I set up a meeting with the director of the school for Tuesday, but my supervisor said that there wasn't much chance of me getting it off because it would be a day that everyone would want off, and it wouldn't be fair to the other teachers. I ended up going in to the meeting with guns loaded. I told him that this day off was important enought to me that if I couldn't get it, I wouldn't end up resigning my contract. He gave me the day off, and even offered me a raise for my next contract! I was so excited that I could barely get out the door of the meeting room without breaking into a huge grin and jumping up and down with joy. So... In september I will go to Nepal for my mission trip. We will spend one day at the children's house, call the RANCH (Remote Area of Nepal Children's Home) and the rest of the time we will be treking in the Hymalayans to isolated villages delivering medications and testing water. I can't even tell you how excited I am about it. Check out the website: http://www.mountainchild.org/ if you want to know more about the cause.

Next thing that made this week interesting for me: On Monday morning I woke up sick. Monday is an awful day to wake up sick, because you have the whole week to endure. I would much prefer to wake up sick on a Thursday or Friday. By Wednesday afternoon I was feeling better, but once my body was better, I completely lost my voice. I couldn't talk at all on Thursday or Friday. This meant that I had to carry a bell to class with me to get my kids attention. On Thursday morning when I first couldn't talk to my kindergarteners with any real voice, when I "whispered" to them, they whispered back. It was really cute. As of now (Sunday night) I am close to being able to speak normally again, but don't know what is going to happen to my voice after ten hours of teaching tomorrow. And I HAVE to be able to talk on Tuesday, because the parents of all my kindergarteners are coming in to observe a lesson. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Last interesting thing that happened this week. One of my supervisors' father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep on Wednesday night. It was completely devistating to everyone because we are all pretty close. My supervisor lived with her parents, so it was her and her mother who found him on Thursday morning. Tradition here is that there is visitation for three days after the death and before the funeral. They have it in a part of the hospital. The family has to stay there the entire time. They even sleep there. It seems to me that not being able to be in the comfort of your own home after the death of a loved one would just make it so much worse, but my Korean friends say that it helps distract them a little bit. (How does living at the hospital distract you from a death?) After school on Friday all of the staff went to visit them. (Yes, we all arrived in a GDA school bus.) Each person has a room for visitation (I'm pretty sure the body isn't in it) with flowers and pictures piled up. When you go in to pay your respect, you take off your shoes, then go put a flower on the little table thing. Then you bow to some guy who is in there, who I have no idea who it was. After that, you go accross the hall and sit down for a snacky type meal. I guess the tradition is to eat and talk and pretend that you are happy when you are in there. We didn't go to the actual funeral, but frankly the visitation was enough for me. For all of you who still have a dad (or mom or sibling or anyone you care about for that matter) living, make sure that you tell them how much you love them.

Dont have any pictures from this week, so I'll go to my backup plan, because I always have more pictures of my class to show!

Yoo-Jin and Emily are taking "love shots" of milk. I'm not sure where they learned this, but it is a common event during snack time now. On the right, my kids are playing with the "guitars taht they made for a science experiment.
Jun is showing one of his arts and craft projects on the left, and Tommy is modeling his shirt with the incorrect English on the right. (Grammatically incorrect English is a pretty common thing to see on signs, shirts, and product packaging here)

Quote of the week: I was teaching about silent letters on Thursday, when I had lost my voice. I explained in my whisper/frog voice that "A silent letter is when you say the word, but don't here that sound" One of my kids responded with "Like you teacher!"

Tune in next week, for what I can almost promise will be an interesting one!