Five for Friday – my birthday and a biopsy

This week was one eventful week. I’m linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to tell you about it.

On Saturday, I decided to venture the city on my own and visit the Cherry Blossom Festival at Chungnam University. I ended up meeting a new friend from Louisiana and running into several “old” friends who are fellow EPIK teachers. We hung out for the rest of the day. It turned out to be a great day! And I didn’t spend it alone after all!

It was so gorgeous! It was snowing cherry blossoms all around us.

Cherry blossoms are only in bloom for a short while over here, so my friend, Bola, and I decided that we wanted more. So on Sunday we met up to go see the cherry blossoms at Kaist University. They were even prettier in that part of town!

Is my city of Daejeon gorgeous or what?

That night, a big group of us met for Mexican food (it’s not Tex-Mex but it’s Korea has to offer…picture a lot of cabbage in your burrito and taco) and then I persuaded 5 friends to go to a norebang (Korean karaoke) afterwards. We only signed up for an hour and a half but ended up staying over 3 hours because the guy kept giving us extra time for free (common in Korea). We could have had another hour for free, but it was almost 12:30 am, and we were tired. And it was a school night.

It was THE BEST birthday! Better than I could have asked for.

I updated my game boards and added some new ones. I really like the ending result. For each game board, I included a board in full color and one in partial color if you’re trying to conserve color ink. What do you think of some of them?

Each game board has several “jump ahead”, “go back”, “go back to Start” spots, which are related to that topic. I used game boards in my classroom last year, and my students were always begging me to use them. Little did they know that they were practicing their skills and learning at the same time. Oh, how happy it made me! They LOVED being able to choose their game board and often had a favorite. I would only let them choose from maybe 5 at a time. Otherwise, they would have been there all day!

They are great to use with task cards, flashcards, or even boring old worksheets!

I have also been working on my giving face lifts to my emergent readers. My emergent readers are a tad bit unique from other emergent readers. Since my students are blind or visually impaired, they respond well to music. So I created each page to be read/sung to the tune of “Where is Thumbkin?”, which is great for my kiddos…especially because they repeat each line which helps their reading. It’s a win-win!

Last but not least….before I left for Korea, I had my very first mammogram. As is often the case with first mammograms, they found some irregularities and wanted to keep close watch for comparisons. They wanted me to get another mammogram in 6 months. I’m a little bit behind, but I went for my mammogram yesterday (it was actually more like a sonogram). The doctor found some nodules that were questionable, so she wanted me to get a biopsy. So here I am in a foreign country with no family around me and having to get a medical procedure done. Can you guess what happened? Yep…I got a little emotional and teared up. They told me to go down the street several buildings away and visit this other clinic that specializes in breast biopsies. I walked there and was planning on scheduling my biopsy. Well, Korea is pretty efficient in their medical procedures, and they actually saw me right away and did my biopsy yesterday. I had always thought that it was a day procedure kind of thing. Nope. The doctor was very sweet and spoke perfect English. She will call me in a week with the results. I’m doing OK today, but I was pretty reflective last night. I’m very grateful that everything was done so quickly and that I didn’t have to wait. I was standing on the corner in downtown Daejeon last night, and I completely felt God’s presence. And felt comforted.

Like I said, it was a pretty eventful week. How as your week?

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