We're Kaleidoscopes

The humidity and wet season have driven my back to the gym. The manager seemed so excited to see me that I think she wanted to give me a hug but refrained. Though the locker room situation here is one I will never adapt very well to, I do rather like my reputation.
We're back into the swing of things at work, which wasn't nearly as difficult as I had anticipated after lying around on the beach and in hammocks for a bit. Last week flew like an 18 year old cruisin' Lindbergh on a Friday night, and this week is following close behind. I think the kids have flown off the handle though, at least the kindergartners, while my elementary clan has taken to some surprising form of Zen that has them being quiet and completing their homework. The girls still chatter about nonsense (I can pick that up even in Korean) and the boys still make some obnoxious noises, but they have all grown on me. I have always been all gun-ho about the kindergartners because they generally love you no matter what...and they're just cuter. But in their defense, the older kids don't always see my most charming qualities; I get them in mid-afternoon, after I've taught a full morning and into early afternoon of kindergarten. So I'm expecting to be cut a little slack by the older kids. They've been impressing me though, and we've been having some good laughs.
I discovered Tom (my Henry #2) is a sticker fiend, and so I line up a row of stickers at the beginning of class and deduct them each time he gets up out of his seat(today it was only once, as opposed to the average 10 or 11); Dorothy, who was one of the slowest in the class 8 months ago, just posted the highest score on the comprehensive exam that all the students had to take; I couldn't get Jinny or Ethel to say a word to me when they first started, now they read aloud, ask to carry my books for me, and show off their new apparel; David cried in class and hardly played with any of the other kids, and now he gives them high-fives and chases them down the hallway. However, it's still much more fun to get the 4 year olds to say okie dokie, booya, and rock on. And it still makes me smile when Justin plops himself and his toothless grin down on my lap, or Jason does the same with himself and his big head.

I'm back on the up and up. The past weekend had me somewhat disheartened, I think just because I spent so much time alone. I've also generally been tired of somethings - food, lugging water, getting lost, sleeping on the floor, cleaning out the drain, etc. Woman days in addition don't help, if ya know what I mean, but as excited as I am to go home, I'm also thinking, "What the heck am I going to do once I get there?" Of course I have catching up with people to do, but after a month or so of that, I'll need other activities; I'll need to make money. That worries me. And it worries me that I only have 5 weeks of this grand adventure left and I might miss out on something because I'm concentrated on going home. What if I'm bored when I get there?
But that shouldn't be where my mind is at. It should be on making these last 5 or 6 weeks awesome, and wrapping things up here to bring back one extraordinary time period of my life. It should be on how blessed I've been here, and how much I've learned and expanded. And it should be on how I need to make sure I put time and effort into the relationships I do have at home, and to be thankful for those hugely awesome things and even those tiny, seemingly insignificant things such as garbage disposals. I should be thinking about how I always thought I wasn't very brave, and how I somehow managed to pull this off. And, thus, I should be able to pull off so many of the things I've been afraid of for so long. A friend from church asked me why I haven't seriously pursued writing since I told him it was what I truly wanted to do. No reason, I said, other than being chicken. "What are you scared of? No one is going to kill you!" That was like a slap upside the head. A guy I've know and seen once a week, if that, for 6 months just totally pointed out my hiding spot. I should be thinking that the possibilities are endless....
This post seems like its all over the place, but it also seems like I haven't blogged in forever. I have more, but I also have a Skype date and a water fight with kindergartners tomorrow that I need to be well rested for.