My Corner for Education

My classroom was flooded on Friday because a water pipe in the ceiling next room burst during the night. The water crashed through the ceiling and flooded the room next door. It was like a lake flooding the whole room. The room next door was totally ruined. You should see my friend's face turning green after he saw his room. He apparently had a fight with his wife in the morning and then that! Throughout the day, he had to air dry his books, toys, charts and shelves. Somehow the water seeped through the dividing concrete-block wall to my room. Thank Goodness! Mine only had minor damage. Most of my books and resources are in the plastic Rubbermaid containers. Only three boxes of posters and books in banker's boxes were lost in the water. However, stress level went up when the kids came in after the bell. Can you imagine trying to teach a classroomful of kids while rescuing the books and furniture? By mid-morning, my fever blister and headache came back. I didn't get home till eight thirty Friday night. Yeah, I was TOTALLY exhausted.

I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. However, the old energetic granny (Let’s call her Grammy H.)  who was sharing the hospital room with me had a severe hearing problem. People literally had to scream to her ears all the time to communicate with her. I was forced to watch the whole charade in the room. Grammy H could not remember her nurse’s name, either. In fact, she had repeatedly asked the same nurse about her name and where she lived whenever she came in to check on her. I finally had a chuckle and exchanged the look with the nurse. Oh, my my!

Grammy H had her whole family come in and out of the hospital room to visit her everyday. They all spoke so loud that I was forced to take in whatever they discussed in the room. Heck, I had no choice but to listen to her whole family drama during my four-day stay at the hospital. What can we say? When you share a room with a patient like Grammy H, you really have no choice but to live with it. So, I might as well write it down for my blog, and this is how it happened.

Grammy H came into the hospital because she had an earache and an accidental fall at home. Grammy H was almost 91 years old and living with one of her grandsons, Junior. Junior apparently was the main caretaker for her because he was living with her due to his job location in town. In fact, from all the conversations I’d heard, I believe he was the only one, of all people, who truly cared about Grammy H. I got to talk to him and his father when they came in to visit her. The way Junior talked to Grammy H was so genuine and appeared to have no condition attached, which was very different from the other family members of hers.

Grammy’s other family members came in to visit her as well, and they all wanted something from her. The daughter kept pressuring Grammy to sign a paper to state that she would not wish to move out of her home after her discharge from the hospital. She also brought her children in to pressure Grammy to sign the paper. Their reason was that they did not want Grammy to move out of the house. Apparently, Grammy lived in a big house with Junior, and she loved her house and garden. They told Grammy that if she did not sign the paper, they (the hospital doctors and her son) would put her in a nursing care or take her away to a farm.

Grammy wanted to stay in her house, but she also knew that her daughter had a different reason for wanting her to stay in the big house. Grammy told her brothers and other relatives that her daughter just wanted to have the access to her house and her property. From what I had heard, Grammy H just wanted to go home with Junior, her beloved grandson from her son’s side. She believed that Junior would take care of her because he was the only one who cared about her.

I really miss the atmosphere of a traditional Chinese New Year.

Living in a town where only a few Chinese are around, Chinese New Year is just another working day for me. So, how did I celebrate Chinese New Year? I went to work as usual, got home, heated up my left-over dinner, stirred fried tomatoes with eggs over a bed of rice, and ate it.

SAD!

Happy New Year to all my friends and readers. Enjoy the special New Year events in Taiwan.

無題

我最討厭放假前生病，因為我的整個假期就泡湯了！大部份的放假時間我都在養病。即使已經痊癒了，我還是得 “閉關自守”，小心再次著涼。我已經不會傳染給別人了，但是身體還是很虛弱。這次的流行性感冒在學校傳染了好一陣子，好多人都受到感染。我算是最後的受害者之一。

今年的聖誕節我就獨自在家中過，連家庭聚餐我也沒去。因為我不想讓去年的歷史重演。去年家中九十二高齡的老姨媽剛搬到養老院裹，一整個院裹的老人流傳嚴重的流行性腸胃炎，上吐下瀉，而她也被感染。我們要她好好休養，但是她堅持要參加家庭聚餐。結果，除了我以外，全家都在餐後中標。所以今年我主動堅持要在家養病，不想當家庭罪人，但是整日實在是無聊之極。

 生病的日子是非常痛苦的！

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I hate being sick right before the holidays, because I spent most of my vacation time recuperating from the sickness. Even though I am feeling much better, I still have to take it easy and avoid catching the cold again. I am not contagious to other people, but my body is still very weak. This flu has been passed around at school for quite a while, many people were infected. I was one of the latest victims.

This Christmas I decided to stay home alone and did not go to the family dinner. I did not want to repeat what happened last year. Last year, our ninety-two year old aunt just moved to a retirement home. The Norwalk virus was spreading around at the retirement home before Christmas. The aunt was infected with severe gastroenteritis and diarrhea. We wanted her to take rest at home, but she insisted on attending the family dinner. The whole family got sick afterwards except me. So, this year I took the initiative and volunteered to stay home for recuperation. I did not want to be the guilty one, but the day alone at home was really boring.

It has been ten days since I started to feel ill. I don’t want to write about the flu because the feelings are awful. Plus, I am so sick and tired of this flu already, and I get grumpy. Put it this way, I wouldn’t wish this flu upon any of my worst enemies.

When you have a lot of free time with nothing to do other than groaning and moaning in bed with the fever and cough, you would have no choice but to do lot of thinking. I did it, anyway, in and out of sleep. In fact, for a few days, I was so drugged out that I had hallucinations. Now, I am able to walk around a bit and stay awake for a longer period of time. It is about time for me to kill some time here.

 Anyway, these are my grumpy thoughts from the sick bed. Please bear with me.

 What is the spirit of Christmas?

The Spirit of Helping

Every year I take on the organization of a Christmas food drive for our school community. This year, instead of donating all the food to the food bank or Salvation Army, we packed them for some of our school families first. I am pretty sure that most of the food went to help the needy every year. Do the people who are at the receiving end feel happy about the baskets they have received? I don’t know the answer. I usually choose to be the collector of food, instead of the packer and deliverer of the baskets. I don’t know if I can handle the delivering to people I know. I know I would definitely cry when I get to the food bank or talk to the people there. I think I would rather remain anonymous.

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I am a ghost from the past. I love Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, and Charles Dickens. The characters in Dickens’ books all seemed to live in a dark and dingy time period, in need of a big scrub in the tub. I wish I could fly back in time to see the past though. That was a romantic thought. However, the presence is really the past for those children of presence in the future. Does that sentence make any sense to you at all? Well, bear with me; I am sick, you know. I just mumbled. Anyway, talking about children, some children could make me nosebleed.

Last evening, it was our school musical for the grade 2 to grade 5 students. All the classes had to sing in the choir for the musical. Each class as a group had taken a different role in the musical and had to learn quite a few songs. My class was the opening act. They had to sing and dance as “the elves”. I made each student a red scarf. It looked great with the elf hat that I bought for each one of them. A year ago, I found some mini finger flashlights from the dollar store. I had been saving them for a whole year for a special opportunity. We finally used them last night. Each student had two flashlights, one on each hand. The students were just adorable with the whole outfit. The music teacher and I told everybody to wear a white top with dark pants because the elf outfit would be totally perfect with the white. We went through a few dress rehearsals without any problem.

 I have a really good group of students this year. Half of the class has been with me for two years, so they know me and my expectations very well. A couple of the new additions to the class, however, might be a bit challenging at times, but don’t we all have one or two students who are sort of the “mission of the year”? Hahah… Anyway, here is what happened to one of those students last night.

 The concert started at 7:00, so most students were told to arrive at 6:40. However, I told my class to arrive at 6:30 because we were the opening act and we should be getting ready on stage at 6:55. I warned them not to be late or they would be missing the first performance. It did happen before that some students arrived really late, right after their class performances. It broke their hearts!

 All my students arrived on time and wore the appropriate attire. They looked so adorable! Anyway, all of them arrived, except one! The clock ticked and I finally had to give up waiting for her. I grabbed that student’s lights, hat and scarf and lead the class onto the stage. The curtains were drawn and a few minutes before our performance, the girl finally ran up to the stage to join the line, but with a pink and black sweater on! Goodness Gracious! What was she thinking?

 We had been through the rehearsals, and in fact, we had a dress rehearsal that afternoon. I even prepared extra white shirts for people who needed a white shirt. Now she arrived late and with a totally different outfit for the choir. I almost had a fit. I could not drag her off the stage since the show was ready to start. I quickly put the scarf and the hat on her, and send her back to the line.

 All in all, they had a fantastic performance last evening. Today, we had a little discussion in class about last night. I asked the girl why she did not follow the instructions to wear the proper attire for the choir. She said, “My mom said I should be different and be who I want to be.” (What? Can I smack that mother of hers?) Then, I asked her if she actually realized that she was NOT singing as a soloist but in a “choir” for a musical, just like the choir in the church. She said, “I don’t go to church, so I don’t know about the church choir.”  I replied, “I don’t go to church, either, but if I were singing as a member in a church choir, I would have to be singing in unison and dress the same as the others. It is called the teamwork!” Plus, we all got the same instructions as the other classes. Why should she be special? I know the little girl did not make the decision to arrive late, but she did not deliver the messages home correctly, either.

 I am so fed up with people who are so righteous about whatever they want to do and totally disregard the rest of the world. I know I should not be upset with a little girl. However, if she was not told about how her personal decision may affect the team, she would grow up to be another arrogant adult who thinks her personal “freedom of expression” is more important than the priority of the team. Can you imagine seeing a basketball player who decided to ditch the team colour and wear his own jersey instead? That would never happen in the real world. I find that children sometimes behave certain way that mirrors their parents’ attitude. This girl’s mother often comes in to talk to me. Once she had admitted that she is very disorganized herself, and no wonder that the child has difficulty getting herself organized.

 Anyway, my students had a superb performance and the concert is now over. Not only did they sing as the elves, they also worked like the elves helping me promote the holiday food drive for the community. They helped broadcast over the PA system on the daily public announcement, and they went to different classes to collect food. They are good citizens in training. It’s better to start them up when they are young. They are truly my angels of the year!

I am lying in the hospital bed alone, listening to the charades of people shuffling through the hallway, coming in and out of each room. It is the family visit hour. I am staying in the hospital for a short term, and hopefully, I may be able to get out of here on Monday. However, most of the people I have met on this floor would need some contingency plan in place before they can go back home. I am the youngest among the patients here. Most of them are seniors. I am in a semi private room. The lady who shares the room with me is going to be 90 this year. For the last few days, I have watched and listened to the conversations and movements on the floor. I have seen the ugliest family feud over family estate before my own eyes. I am sitting here alone without my family beside me. I can sense and relate the feelings of loneliness to many of these seniors who don’t get any family to visit them. This is the situation that I can foresee myself in the future, being old and alone. Everything happens for a reason. I start to wonder if it is a sign to show me that I should volunteer for lonely seniors who simply have nobody to come visit them in the hospital.

I guess the thought of “Back to School” finally pushed me over the edge and pumped my blood pressure over the limit to the record high 227over 102.

I felt my heart was palpitating faster than usual over the last three days, but then, I thought that was because I had been busy running around like a headless chicken with errands. Plus, I started my swimming lessons a week ago. The muscle fatigue might have triggered my problem. Needless to say, I was merely guessing and playing doctor. Finally on Thursday night, I measured my blood pressure and it registered 166 over 99. After contacting the TeleHealth, an Ontario health care online support agency, I was told to immediately check in to the emergency room at the local hospital.

Thank Goodness, it was not too busy at the Emergency Room. I stayed in the ER over night, and a few hours later after seeing the ER doctor, I was finally admitted to the hospital. I really respect what these professionals do day in and day out. I know I am in good hands. The hospital staffs are still doing all kinds of tests on me. I have never seen so many sophisticated pieces of equipment in my entire life. Hopefully, nothing’s wrong with my heart or there is no cardio-related problem.

The only thing I know is I am feeling much better now with the new medication. However, I was bored to tears sitting in the hospital room until I finally got my laptop. So, this is a vacation break for me to be away from home.

Julia1492

Writing and posting from the hospital room.

Ode of Remembrance

After all the years have gone past,

I am still thinking of you, and

The time you stood up alone  

When nobody would dare to join.

I can no longer remember your name,

But I certainly know how you came to fame.

You gave the world strength and hope,

But your where about is still unknown.