Changes

A few days before June ended, I lost my job. It was a surprise. It was embarrassing because I've never been laid off before, and it's certainly inconvenient for a number of reasons.

The morning before I found out, I was driving to work past the day laborers waiting for work that day and I thanked God for my job. It was important for me to be mindfully grateful for my job because it didn't pay well, it was pretty meaningless, I felt under-appreciated, etc. But, I had pretty much come to peace with all that and had decided to stick it out for the time being.

Since I came to California, the (only!) 6 months that I had been in this job had been the longest that I'd been employed full-time. It seemed pretty stable, it provided health insurance, and it was nice to have co-workers that I was getting to know better. But, coming from a teaching background, I often wished for that sense of purpose that comes with teaching. Teaching is hard, but there's that general feeling of knowing that what you do can change people for the better.

So, now I'm unemployed again, but hopeful, and excited about the chance to make things again! On about day four of unemployment, I finally got my "studio" corner of our living room cleared of piles. It took me until yesterday to finally start making things again. So, now my etsy stores are updated again and I'll be adding new things more often. Yay!

Do you know him?

I had to quit my little part time job working at a Korean owned after school academy so that I could go to Kentucky for the birth of my second nephew. So, I've been meaning to post this story for a while. I went in yesterday to pick up my last paycheck from there and remembered it:

Tony, a middle schooler who has been in the States for about a year or so, asked me one afternoon, after he found out that I lived in Korea for a while:

Do you know James? He lives in Korea.
(puzzled look on my face)

He's white.

(I start to open my mouth...)

He's a pastor.
Do you know him?

(I ask him if he knows his last name.)

He's married to a Korean.
He lives in Seoul.
Do you know him?

(I tell him that there are probably many white pastors named James who live in Korea and are married to Koreans. I want to tell him that not all white people know each other.)

He has two dogs.
He's kind of huge.
Do you know him?

(Tony is totally serious asking me this question, and he's pretty sure that if he gives me a few more pieces of information on this James guy, I'll end up figuring out who he is. Stories like this are one of the reasons I love teaching.)

more school stories

Our school district issued macbooks to all the teachers who applied for one, so I type you this post from a shiny little white mac. I love it. I hope my clunky Dell doesn't get jealous, because I'll have to go back to that if (when) I stop working in Austin.

Things overheard in my classroom this week:

"I'm intelligent."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know, but I know it's good!"

"I don't want a fancy engagement ring. I want a simple engagement ring and a really fancy wedding ring. I don't know why people do it the other way around."
(I interrupt this story and ask if they, as 5th graders, aren't a little too young to talk about what kind of engagement rings they want. She answers that no, they're not too young and that they also talk about how many kids they want to have and other things that I probably don't want to know.)

"Thank you for teaching us this!"
(This almost knocked me off my rocker. I was teaching a small group how to turn an improper fraction into a mixed number and one of the kids said this. I kinda laughed and he looked at me seriously, saying "No, really. I've been wanting to know this!" Amazing. A highlight of my week.)

"God is speaking!"
(In my fourth grade class, I turned on the overhead, which I don't use very often, so the lens was facing toward the ceiling instead of toward the wall. So, I guess he said this because it was projecting the light on the ceiling. I laughed and he liked that I found him funny. The next day, I was giving him a mini lecture on his behavior and he told me he wished God spoke more often. I told him I wished he did, too.)

"Miss, you're a good singer! You should try out for American Idol with that song!"
(I taught them a song to help them remember the order of operations - you know, parentheses, exponents, multiply, divide, add and subtract from left to right. They thought it was pretty great. One girl even came up to the front to be my backup dancer.)