Day 185: All That Jazz

Today was a great day at work. Everything just seemed to fly by in a blur and my whole work day was gone before I knew it. Even though my schedule is longer on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, I seem to enjoy it more. Maybe it's just the particular combination of classes on those days, or the fact that my students are much more engaging and brighter. I mean I love all my kids, but my M-W-F kids are the ones who've lived overseas and can speak English really well. And they're so damn smart!

Report cards are back again though. God, didn't I just finish writing up the ones for July last week? Wow, that was fast... This crop of report cards is a little different from the last one in the sense that I'm not giving them number scores on certain academic and behavioural qualities, but instead I write in the 'comments' section. We only do this once every semester and it allows parents to get specific feedback, praise, and reccommedations on their child's studies. It's a great idea, but writing up 100 comments is a lot of work! I was gonna dive in to them tonight but then my phone rang...

It was Pauline, and she was looking for a Scrabble partner. I jumped at the chance to procrastinate and walked the 45-second walk over to her apartment. We ended up having a really cool night just hanging out together. We played Scrabble, drank some red wine, and had some really nice jazz going on in the background - a little Louis Armstrong, a little Ray Charles, and a little Billie Holiday. We talked about our respective travel plans for Chuseok and I don't know if it was the wine or the sultry jazz in the background but the whole night had a very 'modern, urbane, sophisticated' feeling to it. I felt like I was all grown up (which I guess I really am!) and living some sort of posh debonnair lifestyle.

Yes, it was just Scrabble, some cheap wine from a local store, and mp3's on a laptop, but it was pretty darn cool nonetheless. Pauline kicks my ass each and every time we play Scrabble and I've vowed to her that I'm not leaving Korea until I've beaten her at that darn game! One of these days I'm just gonna win, I know it!! (aahhhhh yes, Scotty's competitve side rears its ugly head again...LOL)

I'll have another glass of merlot, please, Pauline...it seems to be helping my vocabulary... ;-)