Always look on the bright side

Do you know those mornings where every frustration/annoyance/minor injustice that you thought had passed you by, one day inexplicably culminates into one very big ugly emotional pimple just bursting to be squeezed?

I had one of those mornings yesterday morning.

I don't get into bad moods very often. There was no reason why the pimple chose yesterday to rear its infernal head, but as I neared my school in the morning, I felt like I was about to burst into tears. Dicky Knee was hurting like a bitch, and her new best friend, The Pimp (the kilogram heavy plaster splint I've had to wear for the past week) was making me feel like Quasimodo on a very bad day.

I pulled myself together and walked into the school.

At that moment, two of my favourite third graders, two uber-hyper girls who, I suspect, are dangerously close to self-combusting with enthusiasm, burst into the foyer in a tornado of "Kim-sensei!!! KIM-SENSEIIIIIIIII!!!!!!"s.

Seeing the Pimp, they grabbed my bag, put my shoes away and got my slippers out for me, took my bag into the teacher's room and pulled out my chair. They disappeared with each of them shouting over the top of one another - "o-daijini!" (take care of your health!)

Love those girls.

I do have a band of naturally extroverted students who always say hello to me in the corridors, but most of them are interminably shy. I'm only there 2 mornings a week, so it's not like I'm part of their everyday wallpaper.

But today, previously bashful students came out of their shells to say hello! are you ok? and wanted to know what was wrong with my leg.

It seems that if I just look normal (?) they are too shy to come up with something to say, but the vernacular of health is a popular and easy way into a conversation. OK. A bizarre conversation peppered with hybrid English and Japanese, but when your girls try to mime "crutches" and keep saying, "tree! tree!" it sure as hell puts a smile on the dial.

Love that skewl. They cheered me up immeasurably yesterday morning. Seems Dicky Knee has been good for something.