New School Year

Unlike in the U.S., the school year in Korea ends in late February, and the new year begins in early March. And what a busy beginning it has been! I have about 80 new preschool and kindergarten students--thankfully not all at the same time--and most of my old preschoolers have returned. Unfortunately, the textbooks don't arrive until next week. Since it's a new school year, the number of crying episodes has increased drastically from an average of 3 per week to 14 last week. I'm hoping to get that back down again very soon. Here are some photos from this past week.My kindergartners moved up to 1st grade, so while I still see them in the hallway, I don't teach them anymore. They don't seem to be distraught about this, but it makes me a little sad. They made great progress in their reading and writing in the past few months. I'm so proud of them, but I do miss seeing them in my classroom on a regular basis.

I still have my bilingual 2nd-4th graders, plus a couple new students in my bilingual classes. My older students moved up to the middle school, so I don't see them anymore, except to run into them in town on occasion.

So with all the hustle and bustle of the first week of a new school year, crying kids, missing textbooks, matching 80-some names with new faces, and the rest, I managed to come down with a nasty stomach bug that's apparently making the rounds these days. I woke up on Friday morning feeling a little unusual but not bad. I skipped breakfast, so by my break time at noon, I thought the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach was hunger. I went down to the restaurant on the 2nd floor of the building my school is in and ate lunch. About 30 minutes later, I was sitting at my desk in the teachers' room when I started to feel extremely ill--headache, nausea, fever, chills, shakiness--not a good combination. My coworkers said my skin was changing from red to ashen in waves. Fortunately I only had three more classes left in the day, and two of the other teachers were able to cover them for me. I quickly jotted down the lesson plans and left the school by about 2 PM. I spent the rest of the day and most of Saturday in bed, in the bathroom, or running between the two. Not fun and definitely not my choice way of spending the weekend.

Just to emphasize that I have truly terrific friends, three of them called on Friday evening and Saturday to check on me, and another one came in person. On Friday night, Joy offered to bring me juk--rice porridge, which Koreans eat when they're sick like Americans eat chicken noodle soup. I like juk--I even eat it when I'm not sick--but not even that sounded good, so I thanked her but said no. By Saturday night, I was glad to find a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup in the back of the cupboard from my shopping trip after my last round of the stomach bug back in October.

I was feeling quite a bit better on Sunday morning and was supposed to teach Sunday school for the first time in three weeks, so I got dressed and headed for church. I was about halfway through the hour-long bus ride to the church when I started feeling ill again. By the time I got to church, I was not about to spew but was pretty uncomfortable. I said a quick hi to the kids and then told the adult helpers that I needed to go home. One of them kindly offered to drive me, which was exceptionally generous since I live so far from the church. It took about 40 minutes by car but was much more comfortable than the stop-and-go and limited seating of the bus. By 2:30, I was back home. I made a pot of homemade chicken noodle soup (much better than Campbell's, not as good as Mom's) and spent the rest of the day in bed, watching Korean dramas on TV (I don't get any English language television stations) and preparing a few things for this week's lessons.

I'm still not 100%. I'm tired, have a mild headache, and feel a little dehydrated, but it's a huge improvement over the weekend. I was able to make it through all 9 classes today without any trouble. One of my coworkers told me this afternoon that it's good to see that I'm back to "a people color" again. I'm pumping the fluids and plan to take it a little easier than usual for a while. There's nothing exciting on my calendar for the next week or so--just classes and taking care of myself. Speaking of which, it's past my bedtime. I'll try to post some more cute kid pictures again this week.