Friday was the first day with all the staff. So I got to meet and promptly forget the names of all the folks that have been here before. Okay, so I remember some of them, but there are a lot of staff at YISS. Perhaps most importantly in terms of day-to-day, I met the people in the high school math and science departments, including the people that taught my classes last year. So I know who to badger about what :) We played some goofy games Friday morning - Ross and I are now the reigning YISS birdie on a perch champions, and we did the classic aluminum foil dress-up thing. It was fun :) We took a trip to the school supplies store, and I picked up some things for my classroom. My ability to avoid actual lesson planning is coming to its end. Actually, it turns out that there is a very detailed curriculum map on the school's Atlas website, so rather than making everything up, I can reuse and tweak at my discretion. That'll cut down a lot of the planning stress. And the aforementioned teachers who had my classes last year are at most two doors down in my hallway, so that helps too :)
We had Saturday morning off, which I used to full advantage talking to people in significantly different time zones. I Skyped my little sister, and chatted with some friends from back home and from PFO. In the afternoon, we all headed out for our staff retreat. We were at a camp in what apparently passes for wilderness to a Seoulite. I got to do some running around - played Ultimate and soccer (ahem...football), and we did a goofy activity where we came up with lyrics and performed songs to popular tunes that were somehow related to what we're all doing here (my group sang "I need your lesson plan" to the tune of the Beatles' "I wanna hold your hand"). "American Teacher" (to the tune of "American Woman" brought down the house with some incredible singing and air banding, although I was most impressed by the lyricists that brought us "Land of the Morning Calm" to a tune I didn't recognize. I took video...if it turned out okay, I'll post it on fb before too long.
We then got to sing some song around a campfire, which I haven't done since high school, and I took a walk and spent some quality time talking to Jesus. We slept, awoke, and came back home. Wow...I just typed 'home' without thinking about it. An introspective person might wonder what that means. Good thing I'm not that introspective.
Back to work again tomorrow. Kids arrive in a week. I've been here a week and a half. It seems like a lot has happened in that time. The Lord has been faithfully providing. I just hope and pray that I can be faithful in carrying out what I am here for - that I can show whatever small bit of Him is in me to my students, and that they will want that for themselves.
Looking forward to what God has in store.
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