Christmas in March?

I make no secret of the fact I HATE cold weather, especially when I feel cheated out of my yearly warm weather by an especially rainy Korean summer. In the cold, I turn into a grouchy hermit. I don't want to leave the warmth of the indoors. Even the quickest errands seem painful. I hate driving in winter weather. In my perfect world, the thermometer never gets below 80. I have no use for winter...

Except during Christmas. I love Christmas more than I hate winter. And snow is part of a perfect Christmas. This is a picture Eliza took last Christmas.

That is Christmas perfection.

This is a picture I took from our deck this morning.

That looks like early spring. It's been in the 40s for most of the past couple weeks. It feels like early spring. This is completely unacceptable Christmas weather. Christmas is cold and snowy, not gray and rainy.

All month I've been singing the line from the Snow song in the movie White Christmas, "What is Christmas with no snow? No white Christmas with no snow"

Le sigh. It's not been feeling much like Christmas this year, and I blame it on the lack of winter weather.

But at least the Morris family Christmas tree looks as good as ever. FYI-in addition to snow, another Christmas rule is a real tree must be used. It's one of Santa's laws.

And, for your holiday viewing enjoyment, here is a clip from White Christmas, which is a fantastic movie that everyone should watch.

ANNNNDDDD, as long as I'm on the subject of Christmas movies, here is a clip from It's a Wonderful Life, the best Christmas movie ever, and one of my all time favorite movies. If you have not seen it, shame on you. Drop what you are doing and watch it. Now. Seriously, SO GOOD! My mom's cat got his name from this movie.

I don't know, I lettered in band (true story)

In Korea, the students had "gym" class. Given the school's unwillingness to hire a legit gym teacher, and the massive failure that was their attempt to make the teachers do structured activities (despite giving all the teachers whistles and gym activity packets), SLP gym class was little more than chitchat time for Meagan and me, while the students ran around the gym building forts out of mats, then crying uncontrollably when another student knocked down the fort. This was my gym class crier, SuHyeok.

And one more of him because he is cute, and I miss my kiddies so so SO much. This time he is driving a chair.

The first time the gym class tears came, he was so hysterical I thought something serious had happened. He tucked himself into the corner of the jungle gym, and I had to crawl into it and physically carry him out. He refused to tell me what happened. Finally, one of the Korean teacher teachers got the reason for the tears of him. "They knocked down my thing"...huge sigh...and more crying. After this it became a semi regular occurrence.

Despite my lack of whistle, I technically was a gym teacher, but not by choice. While I understand the importance of physical activity, I seriously question the mental health of those who willingly teach PE for a living.

I subbed for a PE teacher on Friday. Here are some gym class observations:

The smell. One of life's great questions-what is that gym class smell? The gym itself doesn't have the smell if you go in the evening for a basketball game or band concert, but all gym classes have the gym class smell, kind of like a mix of dirty kids and Nerf balls. I've taught gym at three different schools, and they all have that smell. And as soon as I smell it, it takes me back to the horror that was gym class in jr. high and high school.

The made up games. There are plenty of sports in the world, definitely enough to fill a year of PE class. So why do gym teachers feel the need to make up their own games? On Friday, we played "spiderball" which is a variation of dodgeball. Why couldn't we play regular dodgeball? What the heck is spiderball? Even after spending 4 hours straight watching kids play it, I'm still not entirely sure, but I know this much-IT NEVER ENDS. For real. There is no ending. There are no teams, and when one student gets out, another one gets back in, yet the game ends when all the students are out except one. Does that make sense? Of course not. Why not? BECAUSE IT IS NOT A REAL SPORT! Why did we have to play flickerball? Wasn't flag football bad enough? And those stupid tests they would give us? WHY WHY WHY???

"Yeah, this week we are going to finish up our unit on 4 corner soccer, so your test will be Monday." Really? As if making us play a a made up sport for 3 weeks wasn't bad enough, then they tested us on it too?

The students.

Every gym class is filled with a wide variety of students, yet they are the same in every school, in every gym class.

There are the hard core students. You know the ones. They always have to be team captain. They give their teams names like "Team USA" or "The Master Spikers" and they take every sport seriously, even the fake ones. When their netball team fails to make the PE class playoffs, they suddenly find themselves questioning the meaning of life, and wondering about the direction they are headed in. The see their dreams of medical school floating away, only to be replaced with visions of making a living walking along beaches and construction sites with metal detectors, seeing what they can dig up.

There are the criers. SuHyeok. Often times the criers are wannabe hard core students, but they are lacking the talent to make their dreams of PE class championships become reality.

There are the injury fakers. As the students get older, the injury fakers become the girls who sit out due to cramps. Dumb, exercise helps cramps. Anywho, the injury fakers are the ones who bring a doctor's note at least once a month for injuries that only plague them during the 45 minutes a day they are supposed to be in PE. When they do actually dress for PE, they no doubt get injured within the first 10 minutes of class, and spend the rest of the time sitting on the bleachers.

Then, there are the indifferent students. This is what I was. I could not care less how my PE team did. I was always picked last because the hard core students knew my PE indifference would hurt The Master Spikers chances of going all the way. The only good part of PE was when the team I was on had an odd number of players, and people had to rotate out.

I of course saw all these students during Friday's spiderball games. It took me back to when I was a student in PE class. Friday could not end soon enough.

I've not just been subbing for PE though. I've been all over, teaching Bureau County's finest young minds.

Yesterday, I taught third grade. One girl wrote a love song during recess. She performed it for me. It was AWESOME. I've never come so close to laughing in a child's face. She asked me to hold her lyrics while they were in computer class. I quickly did a tour of the building, looking for a xerox. I failed, so I took a picture instead.

She is no Taylor Swift. I'm not sure where a 9 year old comes up with this stuff. In case you can't see the picture clearly:

Song I (heart) you

I love you so much

I wold come and rescu you

I am shour

But there

is one thing more I will

fight for you you will fight

for me we will come bake

for etch other will you come

bake and love me so much

There you have it, written by future Grammy winner Autum. At first I thought she spelled her name wrong, then I looked at the class roster. Nope. It wasn't her mistake. It was her parents.

If anyone wants me to reenact the singing, let me know. It's not to be missed.

Marching, take 2!

As I've said before, I know cool, and nothing is cooler than a marching band. So when a friend posted this on Facebook, I about wet myself with glee. Seriously awesome! When I was in high school, the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall came to Princeton. The town had a little ceremony, some veterans spoke, and the Princeton High School Marching Tigers played a medley of all the various military branches' songs. We weren't quite this good.

Seriously, the Air Force and the Navy!! Gah!

Laura 2012 edition

Each December, for a few fleeting moments I think about New Year's resolutions. And each year, I briefly consider making one. But I never do. I don't really hate them. Not really. Kind of. A little. I think the main reason I never seriously made one was because what would I do?

Diet? Yeah right.

Exercise? I kind of already do, sometimes halfheartedly, but it's not worth making a resolution for.

Stop smoking? I would have to start first, which aside from being disgusting, would also hurt my already halfhearted exercise attempts.

Start a hobby? Perhaps, but why would this be good for a new year? If I wanted to start a coin collection, I would start today, not wait until January 1.

So, my New Year's resolutions are never anything more than thinking "Hmmmm, maybe I will make a resolution this year" after seeing a late December Jenny Craig commercial about "making this year THE year!"

Rather than thinking about resolutions, I like to use December as a time for reflection. And this has been quite a year. It is a good thing that I am not working full time because I have a lot to reflect upon.

I have never been one to have a huge group of friends. I prefer a few close friends that I can talk to at great lengths, friends that I would do anything to help, as well as count on for always having my back. I like to know well a few quality people, not a collection of Facebook friends I maintain little contact with aside from using them to look ultra popular on my birthday. I like to know my friendships are strong. My first 7 months in Korea, I deviated from that. It was fun to a point, but at the end of the day, I felt like I was missing something. I felt lonely. I missed my friends from France. I missed having friends that I could sit with at a cafe talking for hours and being so engrossed in the conversation that no one realized too much wine had been drank. Doing tequila shots in a trashy dance club is not my scene, but it was the scene of my pseudo friends. I am anything but a party girl. I never liked speaking up. I'm not a planner, I'm a follower. I was always worried if I suggested something different, they would not like me, and having someone not like me was unthinkable.

The funny thing about pseudo friendships is that they don't last. For reasons I am not still not entirely sure about, everything fell apart in February. I tried to talk to them. One of them flat out refused, saying she had "no desire to socialize with me again" I did talk to another one of them. I thought we worked things out, but yet every time I messaged her to see if she wanted to do something, she didn't respond. Not once. And one of them, the one I'd been friends with for the longest (only barely over a year, but still) just stopped talking to me. I'd never felt so betrayed. I'd never been involved in something so junior high, even when I was in junior high. I'd never felt so alone. It was three against one. Suddenly my Friday nights were ice cream and pajama pants, not dresses and loud music.

Then, I started thinking about those "friendships" that I no longer had. How well did they REALLY know me? Not all that well. We seldom had meaningful, interesting, and long talks. Did I feel good about myself when I spent time with them? Sometimes, not always. Often times they would say horrible things about other people, and I found myself joining in. When did I become this? I even heard them all say really mean things about each other, when others were not present. What had Korea done to me? Not only was I not defending people I had no issues with, I was doing it right along with them. I wanted to feel accepted. I didn't want them to not like me. I realized I did not like who I had become. I was not the mean gossip who spends every weekend night at a bar, then barely waking up in time to see the sunset the next evening.

Plus, real friends talk out issues, even if it means an uncomfortable confrontation. Real friends have an interest in saving a friendship. Clearly, I had made some bad bad choices. Where were my real friends?

So, after some lonely lonely weeks, I realized those friendships falling apart was a good thing. Who needs people like that? It forced me make new friends. It forced me to find other people to spend time with, and I was more selective the second time around. I saw new things. I went new places. I volunteered Saturdays instead of sleeping all day. I got to know Korea outside of the nightlife, and I loved what I saw. I left Korea with what I consider to be a few very good friends. Friends that I can have interesting conversations with, friends that understand a person can have a bad couple of days, but they don't ruin a friendship.

This year has helped me see that I have some really fabulous people in my life, and I'm thankful for each and every one of them. The events of this year have also inspired me to make my first real New Year's resolution: I want to be more of a planner and less of a follower. I want to speak up if I hear someone saying something I don't like. I will say no if someone invites me to do something that I don't want to do. If someone doesn't like me, I don't care. Life goes on. My opinion of myself is the only one that matters, and I know that I am awesome.

In case you are wondering, I have to start my resolution a bit early because 2012 will not be a full year due to the apocalypse next December. Get your crystals.

And a few weeks into January, if I realize this resolution is failing, I can always make this the year I start scrapbooking while maintaining a successful diet plan.