(Sigh)

Friends, Family, and Lovers (wait...)

I haven't had a whole lot of time to sit and write in this thing over the past couple of weeks. I don't even know where to begin....

Let's start with my kids, shall we? And when I say "my kids", I'm talking about my classroom (in the rare case of a hot, single guy stumbling upon my blog, I don't want him to think I have children of my own). My kids are (drumroll....) terrible!!!!! There are no words. Most of my classes are OK, but the last two classes of the day--shoot me please! I had a boy decide the other day that it would be fun to throw his chair across the classroom. I was totally shocked by this behavior and I asked him why he felt the need to do it. Much to my annoyance, he answered with a shrug and a poorly spoken "I don't know." The part that nearly threw me over the edge? He was laughing in my face. Ugh!!!!!!!!!! "You don't know? Well, why don't you spend some time thinking about it outside of my classroom." And with that, I gave him a nudge out the door and locked it behind him.

I told my friends over the weekend that I was having some discipline issues in the classroom and my friend Dan gave me a fabulous idea. He told me to have the offending child stand at the back of the classroom with his arms above his head for five minutes. If the child keeps talking out of turn while he's standing there, have him jump up and down with his arms above his head for ten minutes. I was absolutely horrified at the thought of torturing my kids with such a thing... until today.

One of the boys in my last class (noticing a "boy" pattern??) decided it would be fun to stab another kid in my class with his pencil. HE STABBED A KID WITH HIS PENCIL!!!! I promptly marched him to the back of the room and had him lift his arms straight above his head and started a timer. The offender was horrified. The whole class was horrified. They all started whispering to each other in Korean with shocked looks plastered on their little faces. The kid at the back of the room (we can start calling him Tom) started whining about his arms hurting. I gave him another five minutes... and it worked!!!! The rest of the class went smoothly after Tom sat back down at his desk. He knew he couldn't mess with me anymore because if he did, I would send him straight to the back of the classroom again. Throughout the rest of the day, all I had to do was point to the back of the room, and all of the kids would shut up and sit up straight. It was a beautiful thing. And it was funny. I had the worst time not laughing when I had a line of boys in one of my classes standing at the back of the room at one point today. Does that make me a bad teacher? (Please don't give me a conscience about this... I like the control I have for now.)

I made a visa run to Fukouka, Japan last weekend. My friend Mel took a few days off of work to come with me and we spent a grand total of four days in Fukouka (I love saying the name of that town). We shopped a lot, drank a lot of coffee, slept a ton, and visited two buddhist temples. One of the temples we visted was a Zen temple and it was really cool (whoa, I'm so discriptive). The temple gardens were amazing and the architecture of the buildings was beautiful and very Asian-looking. And, of course, what is a trip without at least one classic Liz moment?

Mel and I arrived at the Zen temple at 4:30 in the afternoon, and, much to our horror, the gate was closed! We were so disappointed because we made a huge trek to the other side of town to see it, but alas, the gate was shut tight. So... we decided to try and take pictures of the temple through the cracks in the wooden gate in front of the gardens. I perched myself right in front of the gate and put my camera lens right up to the largest crack/peep-hole I could find. I took a few pictures before Mel found a better way to get a snapshot: she found a huge rock right next to the gate. She stood on top of it to get a good view of the garden hiding behind the gate walls, and as she was balancing herself on top of the rock and taking pictures, a group of Japanese girls walked passed us, giggling hysterically while obviously pointing at us. I was a little annoyed with their blatancy, but I figured we probably looked ridiculous. If only I had known just how ridiculous we looked at the time..... One of the girls finally stopped giggling and came over to tell me, in very broken English, that the gate did not even come close to surrounding the gardens. In fact, if Mel and I would have walked five more feet we would have seen a huge opening in the gate where we could enter the temple gardens without any trouble whatsoever. Here we had gone to great lengths to take a picture of the gardens from a distance (we had labored for nearly 20 minutes at that point) when we could have just walked into the gardens. But at least I can't say "Only me!" because Melanie was just as ridiculous as I was in this instance. ;)

OK, I could keep going, but my fingers are tired and my eyelids are heavy. Working with kids on a daily basis exhausts me in ways I never thought possible. Stephanie and Adrienne, I have a new respect for what you do... and I pray that you find new jobs soon.