Being a gimp and school difficulties

  Thumb update: I now have a real cast on my arm.  It's a nice green colour, and I'm happy about it mostly.  But it makes me wonder if putting any part of a person's body in absolute confinement for any reason is a good idea.  I feel somewhat claustrophobic with it on.  I'd really like to bend my wrist and thumb.  But I'm not letting it affect things too much.  I'm getting pretty good at writing with a marker or pencil between my pointer finger and middle finger.  And I'm impressed by how well I've learned to use chop sticks with my left hand.  Also, I'm planning on playing in the soccer game this weekend.  So life goes on.  The doctor said it could take 2 or 3 weeks until the cast can come off, but they want me to get x-rays once a week to check on it (and I think because they are payed every time they have a patient come in).

  The situation at school hasn't been the smoothest lately.  The parents of our students do pay quite a bit for their students to go to Poly school and this means that they are very invested in their child's education.  This has it's positives, but it also have it's negatives.  Some parents aren't afraid to mention any concerns they might have to the school, which is ok, but in my opionion our directors try to please the parents a little too much.  The result is that the teachers are brought in for meetings with the directors every once in a while to bring up these concerns and many times these concerns contradict concerns that another parent brought up at an earlier time so that we as teachers are being told to do two opposing things.  There are other difficulties related to this, but this is one example of some of the stresses of the job.

  Things continue to go well overall though.  I need to make sure I keep remembering that being in Korea is a great opportunity for me to learn a lot, so I should keep on open mind.  Here's a picture of my cast and some pictures of the Pohang Steelers game we went to this past weekend.  It was fun.

A Korean co-teacher wrote something in Korean that means get better soon.

This is right before Pohang scored on a penalty shot.  We tied 2-2.  We were sitting in the loud section where the fans had drums and sang these cool-sounding songs and chants.

Thanks for reading.
Michael