::A Geek in Korea::

There has been a couple of students spreading around a nasty cough. It started last week, and you just roll the dice to see if you end up getting coughed on in class. I started to come down with a sore throat this weekend. If I am going to get sick is always my first symptom.

I took it easy this weekend, and even got a long nap in on Sunday. This of course caused me to stay up late into Sunday evening, unable to sleep, bored out of my mind. By the time I did get some sleep, I had thrown off any chance of actually being rested for today at school.

Feeling like you are slipping into illness and about to have a very painful amount of talking to do is not how a teacher wants to start a day. My coworker declared that he had felt a cold coming on last week, but he said he felt great today. By random chance, we got a gift of some cold remedies as a gift from a parent today. My coworker turned down the medicine, but I asked for anything they had available to keep fighting off the sore throat waiting for me.

My first three classes are storybook stuff where I need to read, the students model, then I listen to them read and fix their pronunciation. This requires loud, clear reading. No time to rest. By the end of these classes I had a nice, swelling headache and a raspy tone to my voice.

My fourth class, thankfully, was assigned a speaking test last week. I had no inkling that I would be sick when I assigned that test on Friday.  I used this speaking test as a way to rest my voice. The students were supposed to explain their opinions on the topic of “Elderly People in Nursing Homes.” No one was prepared, and no one cared about the topic. I brought the director in to complain about their sloth. I’m too annoyed to risk my voice yelling at them for being lazy I bring in someone else to do it for me. Irony? I graded their tests and got a chance to rest.

My last two classes are smaller and more personal, so I wasn’t forced to work that hard to keep them under control. We even had a spirited debate in the last class with high school students. I’m going to take it easy for the next few days and I hope I can recover without being over medicated or having too nasty a time.