the final stretch

Work was overwhelming and stressful all last week. We had open house and every teacher in our school was feeling the pressure from the principal to do an outstanding job by her standards. I stayed at work late all week and even ate dinner at school once. The thing that I hate about when work becomes so hectic is that I become very self-absorbed and anti-social. I spent my last drop of energy on my job and felt like I had absolutely nothing left to give to anything or anyone else.

This week is the last week of school with my current class. I need to clean up, pack up my stuff from the current room and move to another classroom by Friday afternoon. Packing always takes a lot longer than I think. I also need to do my final report cards and give the final assessments. I tried to work on the report cards tonight but the system wouldn't accept my password. What's up with that? I took such care to write it down where it was safe too. Ugh...

a father's heart

I sent my Dad some checks from my wedding a few weeks ago that were made out to him and he called me to tell me that he would send me a check back. I told him just to keep it and he kept saying that I should have it. But I don't do that Korean back and forth thing so I firmly told him to keep it. I know he isn't exactly rolling in the dough. Still I was touched and thankful for his sacrificial love for me. I am blessed to have imperfect but loving parents.

Anime Analogies

I've caught up watching the available "Naruto" anime episodes and couldn't get enough so started reading the manga version online and finished the available chapters of that as well. Now it's just waiting for the new episodes and chapters. Sigh...

I think one of the reasons I enjoy watching japanese anime is how they deal with human pain and sufferings. Naruto, the main character, for example is an orphan. He has no family and was shunned by the people in his village because the curse of the Nine Tails was sealed up in him and people feared him. He grew up desperately alone. All he wants is someone to recognize his existence.

There is another character, Gaara, who also has a monster inside of him whom everyone feared in a different village. He was never loved and even his own father tried to have him assassinated. He grew up hating everyone and loving only himself all the while feeling terribly lonely.

Don't we all feel the pain of loneliness? It's a human condition. And don't we all have monster qualities within ourselves that would scare anybody away if it was unleashed? This is one of the things I'm most grateful for about God because He truly knows all of me and yet is able to love me completely.

The character I can relate to the most is Shikamaru except that he's a genius and I am not. He is lazy and his favorite thing to do is watch the clouds. His most frequently used line is, "How troublesome." I feel like that a lot too.

dancing and having fun 

Here in Kauai 

The Family Life of My Students

I found out more information about my students' sad home life through random events. First one happened when I brought my beautiful wedding scrapbook that Susan made to school and showed it to my students. One kid raised his hand and said that his parents never got married. I don't know why he wanted to share that with the whole class. The other kids seemed surprised but didn't react verbally. Second information came about due to our field trip permission slips. One of the girls didn't have a work number for the slip so I asked her to put down her dad's cell phone number and she said that she didn't know his number because he just left the family without telling them anything. I had met with him for two parent teacher conferences this year and he had seemed pretty interested in his kids so I was surprised at this turn of events. She didn't seem sad about it though. I gathered the third information as I was monitoring the students for one of our activities and accidentally caught two students' conversation. We were writing a postcard from outer space to our parents and this boy asked if he could write to his mom and brother. Then the other boy at his table asked him where his father was and he told his friend that his mom and dad were not together anymore because his dad has another girlfriend. I knew that his father was not living with them because he was still in Mexico but I was surprised because his mom just gave birth to their second son two weeks ago.

So this is the kind of family life my students have. Yet they are able to come to school and learn, play, smile, joke around, and laugh. They are strong.