Laughter

This has been a good week. It was a long week, but full of so many good things. Most of all it has been full of laughter.

So here are my laughter stories from the week...

I got to help coach the middle school girls a couple times this week. It was so fun to be able to work with them, they are such a great group and always make me laugh! I especially enjoy the 6th graders, they are so young and full of energy. It has been amazing to see how much they have improved this season!

I finally went and got my bike tire fixed. It has been flat for over a month now. I don't need to ride my bike that often, so I kept forgetting it was flat and I would have to borrow a bike last minute from someone. JuShin took me to go get it fixed and it was so fun to be able to hang out with her. When we got back to school I went with her to her classroom and we talked for over an hour and had some great laughs! We had a great time sharing stories from our classrooms, talking about life and laughing about random things.

I realized this week that one of my students must have the same sense of humor as I do. He laughs at everything I say that is even remotely funny, even if I'm not really trying to get the students to laugh. Its so cute too because he doesn't really laugh, but more does this short little chuckle thing, which always makes me smile. I think its awesome, especially because he is one of my lowest ESL students. Its so fun to see that he at least understands my humor, even when some of the other kids don't.

I went to dinner with some of the other young single teacher's to celebrate one of their birthdays and I think I spent most of the time laughing. It was so great to get to spend time with them. I don't know if I was just in an extra good mood or what, but everything seemed more funny than usual. We also had a young married couple and their 6 year old daughter join us, which just added to the fun. Their daughter was hilarious and she has a great laugh, one that makes you want to laugh along with her. She had us all playing telephone and was bossing us around, telling us not to laugh or smile and just tell each other the message. It was great.

I went to mamasan volleyball practice, the team I practiced with last year sometimes, which always gives me some good laughs. These ladies just love playing volleyball and will laugh at anything kind of funny that happens in practice. Also, since I am at least 10 years younger than most of them they like to tease me. Sometimes I cannot understand what they are saying, but I usually get the gist of it and laugh along with them. It is such a privilege to get to practice with them, they are amazing volleyball players and they play with so much joy.

I almost forgot this one... We started a new unit in school this week, we are now studying Global Issues. One of my students thought I said Global Tissues and was very confused for a little while. Then of course that quickly became a favorite joke in the class. Which I thought was pretty funny too, but it got to the point where any time I said Global Issues, somebody said Global Tissues and everyone started laughing. So, I had to tell them that Global Issues is a serious thing and that we cannot laugh this much about it otherwise we won't learn anything about Global Issues. After that we were able to have a great conversation about what Global Issues are and why we are studying them.

It has been good to have so much laughter this past week. Laughter keeps things from being too serious, makes me happy, and I really believe that it makes God smile and hopefully laugh along too! I know that he cares about all the people suffering because of Global Issues, but I think he would have laughed along with my class about the Global Tissues and then smiled down at them when they asked great questions about it later.

I am so thankful for laughter, especially the laughter of children.