My Korean Assistant Mariane. Seeing kids faces light up with a warm glow is enough to fall in love with the pain, and push forward into excellence. Sometimes God isolates you, and you begin to feel lonely, but through those trying circumstances He is perfecting you. My team member Dan said it to me quite elegantly- that one should count it as a blessing that Jesus is stretching you in that way, and that when times get tough, you can do nothing else but lean on Him who comforts you- and I would have to agree completely. Teaching is a stretching endeavor, complete with nuts, quarks, quirks and drama. If sarcasm wasn't such a vast chunk of my character, I would have probably hung up the towel by now. stream of conscience: The word Trowel is a beautiful word. I cannot find a particular usage for the word trowel at the moment, therefore, I will leave it be. But for future reference the word means, "a small hand-held tool with a flat, pointed blade, used to apply and spread mortar or plaster." I am occasionally quite tangential. My erratic mind assists me in keeping sanity- and sanity is whatever you deem it to be- in the classroom. We wrapped up the ceremonies in Iksan with a bucketful of smiles and a handful of laughter. I didn't see the night sky on the 24th, but I'm sure the stars were welling up like tears in thick black eyes of Southeast Asia.
I had to discipline more students, and though I saw many tear filled eyes of rebuked adolescent decadency I took no pity. It is quite difficult to teach when the noise in the room overweighs the voice in my head that has a calculated method of progress. Progress has met absolute regression.
The rally was ill-planned and ill-coordinated, notwithstanding, we trudged forward, and my class preformed the song, "God is so Good". We also had the skit of the Fiery Furnace as well, whereupon, we scrapped it last minute. I was kind of bummed because it was a purely original script written by me. Life moves on I guess, and so do TEFL teachers. I was surprised at the sheer amount of parents, namely mothers, that approached my genially afterward. They all had beaming smiles and wore a positive countenance. I snapped picture after picture with my students, who were mostly 5th graders. I even received a gift basket from an amiable mother, complete with chocolate, plastic Korean statues and a note folded with the precision of origami. 
This note was from my student Ho San, who just so happened to be the drummer for the song. I parted with my students, and made the forty minute commute back to JeonJu to commence the WanJu English Camp.Sunday was like every other Sunday. I got up -waited for the bus- which is almost always at least thirty minutes behind schedule, and went to church. I preformed with my team member Christy, Phil Wickham's, "True Love". We played decently for having no practice, which is a Korean cultural disparity to American culture, and then afterwards waited for our bus again. Soon we found that the driver was fast asleep the back seat, so with a bit of hesitation, I opened the passenger door and startled him. In about three minutes we were on our way to JeonJu University.
The night ended quietly, with the A/C blowing chilly tufts of air into the moisture ridden air. First day of teaching at WanJu English camp in the morning.
Goodnight from JeonJu, South Korea,
Your humble writer, and avid stone thrower,
David
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