Life's little joys..

Or how I 'most of the time' tend to see the glass half full..

1. On my way to work this morning, I got caught at the railroad tracks by the commuter train (it can arrive anytime in a 25 minute window). The big problem with getting stuck trying to merge into the 'side road- that leads to the main road' is that once you get on the side road.. you are immediately turning LEFT across 3 lanes of traffic and then you have to turn LEFT AGAIN within one half block to turn onto base property. Not easy and it is compounded even more by the train.. because, you now have a lot of cars in every direction that have been stalled by the train.. and the odds of there being a red light where you need to turn LEFT onto the 6 lane road are low.. and no matter what you now have TONS OF TRAFFIC in all five directions (there's another small road that merges into the 'side road') that have stalled by the train.. *WHICH is why my morning chant as I'm driving is.. "Let me in, LET ME IN!"

but guess what? A car actually immediately let me merge in.. (the unwritten rule of the road is that every other car lets another car merge in front of them.. but, this is Korea and it doesn't happen that much) and as soon as I got on the train tracks.. ready to turn left to CROSS 3 lanes of traffic.. the light turned RED so both lanes were stopped for me. THEN, as soon as I crossed those 3 lanes and got in the far left lane .. the light changed for me to turn LEFT onto base property!

2. My car did not die during all of this stopped traffic time... and part of my stopping is UPHILL.

3. The semester changed at our school two weeks ago and in one of my classes-- I had a boy.. how can I describe him? Oh, I'll give this example from the first day of class and you can decide what type of personality he has. The first day in art class, he kept being inappropriate in class- so, I took him in the hallway to have a little private chat with him and while doing so.. he actually said very sarcastically to me: "Are you FINISHED YET?" I told him that there was one more thing that I needed to do and took him to the office. I have him in art class every other day and yesterday.. he got a burr up his______ and something didn't go his way.. so, he refused to work and actually told me that if he got a bad grade.. 'it would be my fault!'

Well, I received an email today.. that the PRINCIPAL had changed his schedule.. he has been taken out of art class and put into SPANISH class! Oh happy day! And, it's fair.. because last semester-- I got two 'really beyond naughty' boys (to go along with the 5 others already in the class) that moved to my art class from Spanish- because they were 'failing and refused to do any work!' ALL of my classes were good - except for this one class that was full of children that made me feel sorry for and mad at the parents at the same time.. to allow their children to get that rude, disrespectful, defiant for that long.

4. I went to the commissary (our grocery store on base) and bought the toilet paper with the little embossed hearts for Valentine's Day.. (my birthday is the next day)

5. I stopped and got a cardboard box full of 5 kg of fresh from Cheju Island 'tangerines' from a guy selling them from the back of his truck on my street for only 3,000 won.. or about $3.75. The Korean tangerines taste so wonderful.. real tangerine-y. Reminds me of the kind that would be in my Christmas stocking when I was a kid.


And now.. I'm going to do some knitting and watch one of my movies on my new MEGA TV cable system.

Now, think about the little happy things that happened to you today and tell us about them.