Jr. High Classes (and pink eye)

I only have a few more weeks left with my junior high classes, then it's summer vacation for them. The one is pretty chaotic. So many kids, and they are always leaving for some club or special test or something. We have to do a skit with them for the jr. high school's graduation.

The other one is better. The kids are better-disciplined, and seem to have a higher level of English. And the curriculum for this one is very ADD, which is good- you're always teaching something new and playing a game and teaching something new and playing a game. It's easier to control the kids.

There are 19 kids in the class I like, and they had been divided into 4 teams of 4 or 5 kids each. A lot of times there's pair work so I'd have the teams with 5 kids pick one kid to work with a kid from another team, and kids being what they are, they acted like it killed them to be away from their team to play some stupid game. Then there's this one kid who is so nice- he always stays to help me close the windows and turn off the fans and stuff, and plays with the stray dogs who wander the school property- and his team would never play the games with him. He's kind of on the nerd team anyways, and when the whole class is asking each other questions he seems to get along OK with everyone, so I don't know what was up. The last few weeks I have had 3 girls be on a team by themselves so each team has 4 students, and there's no big arguments over who has to work with who when we do partner work.

This past Saturday, I started to shut the windows after class and the nice kid was like, "No, no, allow me!" It was so cute. I was putting my stuff away and he left a little before I did, and when I came out he was petting this dog in the courtyard. The dog was on its back like dogs will do when they want you to rub their bellies, and its legs were kind of against the wall, but it wasn't moving at all. So I was like, "What's wrong with that dog?" and he said "I don't know." And I said it looked dead, and he said "Teacher, I don't understand," so I told him in Chinese, but of course I only know how to talk about death with words from the Bible, and usually those are pretty literary words in Chinese, so I probably said something like "I believe that dog has fallen asleep in death," or something. He said "Oh," and patted the dog on the head and walked away. It was so gross and so sad.

I started to ride the train to work again instead of driving the scooter, and take lots of benadryl at night, so my eyes cleared up pretty well. I still don't know if there is necessarily a connection between scootering and puffy itchy eyes but I think there is. Yesterday (Saturday) I had to drive all over creation because I was teaching in 3 different places and then met friends about 20 minutes away, and when I got home my eyes were pretty itchy. I do pretty good at not rubbing them when I'm awake but I must've woken up half a dozen time rubbing my eyes like crazy last night. I woke up around 6 am to go to the bathroom and my right eye was all red and practically swollen shut. I put some ice on it and went back to sleep, but when I got up to go to meeting it was still almost as bad. At meeting everyone was like "Is your eye OK?" and I was like, "No, of course not!" It was funny. Then people kept being like, Yes, my allergies were acting up yesterday, but come on! It really did look terrible. I couldn't put any makeup on either so I was just this blotchy oozy mess. My eyes kept watering. It has gotten better throughout the day but it's still not good.

I finally found the filter for my AC and cleaned it out, and I will give my room a good cleaning tonight so maybe all that will make a difference. I will go to the doctor soon if it doesn't clear up. I hope it doesn't come to that though. I shutter to think about these crazy doctors getting near my eyes.