Week Within Walls

Obviously, things have been pretty busy around here. Honestly, I just couldn't justify spending the time needed to write a blog post--long or short. I also still have lots of pictures to edit--all of those girls' soccer pictures that I'm supposed to share with parents and Kennedy's birthday party pictures, too. I haven't touched them, though.

Last week wrapped up with Fun Fest (where I did not take one single picture) and my girls soccer team winning first place in the All Star Tournament. This was the last week of the quarter, which always means a lot of grading and of course, preparation for the next quarter. I suddenly realize all that has to be done before we start our next book. I should have spent a lot of time re-reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, but that didn't happen, either. No, I have spent every spare minute grading sonnets. And exams. And blog posts. Oh yes, it's been fun!

I finally finished all of my grading today, though. Only a few more little late assignments trickling in, and then I can upload my grades and put in comments--all right under the wire of the due date, just like my students.

And, of course, last week was the week that Eric was gone for his Week Without Walls with the middle school. Four days with 250 middle school students doesn't sound like fun to me, but I think he enjoyed it. Thankfully, the kids and I managed within our walls, though it was pretty tough to get the work done that I was supposed to be doing. I ended up staying up late to work, naturally.

Our week ended with a professional development day where I was supposed to finally have a chance to work for a few hours. We'd gotten Kennedy a babysitter for the morning during our meetings and then she ended up with a pretty fun play date in the afternoon with one of her classmates. Cade was supposed to spend the day at school.

Around 10:30 in the morning, while I was in one of my meetings, Cade's teacher called and said that he had a fever. She said she wanted to give him some Tylenol and that she would call me back if it didn't go down--this was a much more relaxed approach to a fever than I had previously experienced in Korea. An hour later, she called back and asked me to come pick him up. Poor kid.

I'm not sure that I told the whole story about our first drive to Cade's school, but suffice it to say, I knew I couldn't find it again--easily. Luckily, it was right around our lunch break that the school called, so I had Eric come with me. This allowed him to read the iPhone map to me while I drove--it's really quite different from what we're used to in the States. We can't read signs and when we can the pronunciations on the phone tend to be different than the signs. Even the signs themselves are placed where you really can't predict which exit you're supposed to take until you're passing it. This is a problem.

Anyway, we managed to find it without much trouble--we took a different route from last time, so I'm still not sure how to get there. Because there were two of us, I was able to stay in the car while Eric ran up to get him. This is a real life-saver here where it's impossible to find a legitimate parking space. I'm sure the school has parking, but they haven't communicated to us where we might find it. We got the boy and took him back to school with us where he laid on bean bags in Eric's classroom for a couple of hours until I was ready to go home. Then he slept from 2:30 in the afternoon until 7:00 the next morning. He still hasn't totally recovered, but he doesn't have a fever anymore, thankfully.

This pictures in no way represent our week here in Seoul. It is starting to legitimately cool down now--I need to put away the shorts and get out the sweaters this weekend, I think. These pictures are from our last afternoon in Hawaii. Kennedy had been wanting to take some pictures of the flowers, so we walked down the street from Evan and Jen's for a few minutes to document them. What I wouldn't give for some relaxation on the beach right now!