Happy Thanksgiving!

My Tom class. Love it.



Happy Thanksgiving everyone! There's nothing like leaving everything you've ever known to remind you what you're thankful of. I'll make a list at the end.

Today God was really so gracious. I was in a foul mood this morning... excuse it with what combination you may (too much coffee? not enough sleep? work on a holiday?), I had a terrible headache all day and forgot to take medicine, and I was irritated with my first class before it even began. I have one kid who really gets on my nerves sometimes because he is smarter than most of the class, and he dominates discussion a lot, is a sore loser when we play games, and is rude to the other kids. I don't know I just really didn't feel emotionally prepared to be patient with a bunch of eight year olds... and I was praying that I would make it as I walked in the class. I was also stressed because I had planned the kids some kind of party (it was our last day for this session) and I forgot my wallet at home, could buy barely any food for them, and felt like a crappy person in general...

I walk in the door, and facing me are two rows of eight smiling cute Korean kids. Children never hold a grudge from the day before, and no matter how I'm feeling they trust me and depend on me to take care of them for three hours. I walked in with a pitiful three small boxes of cookies, and still, their eyes lit up. Rudy (barely four feet tall), stood up and held out a box of cookies and some coffee. "Here, teacher." I gasped quietly. From the back left, I saw Viper (the one I lose my patience with, to put it nicely), stand up. "Teacher, here." He handed me a wrapped package of rice cakes. Oh my goodness. What a blatant display of God's grace. Through kids. I felt all my frustration leave in a silent exhale. They had brought food to share, I found out, when they started pulling packages out of their book bags. We passed it all around and they sat in their desks, chomping on their food contentedly.

I pray for the strength to love my kids multiple times throughout the day, but wow, the strength with which they love me. It floors me. At school we have a reward system where we give them "dollars." I only hand them out for perfect test scores, so it's not common for a kid to get more than one in a week. One of my awkward, quieter students, who has a hard time paying attention but is an amazing artist, stopped on her way out of class. She was holding her wallet, and handing me something. "Here teacher," she said. I looked down at her hand. It was ten dollars. She was giving it to me because she hadn't brought anything like the other kids, and I can imagine her debating it the whole class, should I... should I not.... it was so difficult turning it down!! I didn't want to hurt her feelings but I have PILES of that money to give out, while for her, it was hard earned! I put my arm around her and walked her out and told her the best present she could give me was to come to class and smile. (Typical cheesy teacher response. What other option is there). I know she's going through a rough time at home and it's causing most of her absentmindedness.

Tonight I had Uzbeki food at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant with my coworkers. Jonathan said, "When would you ever have imagined that you would be eating Uzbeki food, for Thanksgiving, in South Korea with a bunch of people who were strangers a few months ago?" Yeah I'll admit I never saw that one coming. Food from Uzbekistan (sp?) is really rich, a lot of roast lamb, onions, tomatoes, fried potatoes, thick yogurt, sweet lemon tea in ornate blue porcelain cups.

I talked my friend from college the other night, and I feel somehow more... oriented after it. She did this last year- nannying in Barcelona, traveling alone in Italy for three weeks for Christmas and New Year's, living a life that was glitzy and envied on the outside but one that has its share of cold and solitary moments. I hope I can have her attitude when I get back home in a year. We have to leave what we know, and then everything we took for granted we won't so quickly take for granted again.

I'm thankful for a few more things in the US now. I'm thankful I can convey to a salesperson what I need and even have small talk with them if I want. I'm thankful for a guy that'll open the door for me instead of letting it swing in my face, I'm thankful that I can talk as loud as I want and I won't get as many dirty looks (oh, the obnoxious Americans...), I'm thankful I can talk on my cellphone and wash dishes at the same time, I'm thankful I can read the labels on the food at Harris Teeter, that I can fight with the CD player and Ipod jack in my car (because I have one), that I had ministry and church obligations to complain about, that I can stomp around in the woods without taking a subway to get there, that I can write my mom's debit card PIN on my hand and cook my family dinner (on her tab, mua ha ha), that I could share a room with my sister last summer (by the way, I should've driven you to work that first day- I still feel bad about that), that I had a broken-down bike I could ride in the street without fearing for my life, that I had roommates to laugh with, and fight with, and pray with, and that I could wear Rainbows intermittently in the winter.

I'm further convinced I had better enjoy everything here, because I'll miss it when I leave. I'll miss most food tasting like it's pickled, taking my shoes off when I walk in the house, singing/praying/shouting as loud as I want in my solitary apartment, staring in utter confusion at my Korean teacher, smelling cigarette smoke in every bathroom, and every restaurant, having a boss that wears a purple cardigan, watching kids nimbly maneuver chopsticks, looking at miniature puppies in the windows of pet shops, going cross-eyed at all the blinking lights everywhere, humming along with the pop songs that are becoming oh too familiar (and that are liberally played from speakers on the street and on the buildings), collapsing on the table in the teacher's lounge during break time, unsuccessfully trying to meet the oppressively high fashion standards, poking through 500 different kinds of notebooks in a stationary store, and staying up until 5 in the morning if I want on a school night. I did it last night.

So yeah, it's all about contentment. I keep praying 1 John 2:15- "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Nothing other than fixing my thoughts on God will keep me content.

I'll leave you with this quote from a book I'm reading, "A thousand and one things are used by Him-- in fact, everything (Romans 8:28-29), to bring out the worst in us, ultimately enabling us to see that the Christian life has to be "not I, but Christ." People, circumstances, etc., are never the cause of failure. Self's reaction to them is the cause, and the one problem to be dealt with."