Glad it's Friday

Well, it's been quite a week, and as usual, I would like to detail a couple of things from this week. Hang on, it's been a crazy week.
Last week, because of the graduation and the time of year, we started new classes on Monday. Strangely, though, Monday morning, we woke up to a wonderfully warm morning with a bit of strange yellowish smog-like haze. I got to school and found out that this was the infamous "yellow dust" from China, and the morning classes were cancelled. Hooray.
Unfortunately, I also found out that I won't have a Korean teacher for my morning classes. The Korean teachers in the kindergarten are amazing: they are nurses, bus drivers, lunch ladies, counselors, teachers, sometimes interpreters, sometimes wet nurses, and anything else that is necessary.
I am very chagrined to be lacking a Korean teacher.
I am staying an hour late to serve the kindergarten kids lunch, make sure they brush their teeth, wash up, and get on the bus. This is not really all that bad, but boy, do I miss my Korean teacher.
Tuesday: I left for school, and it was snowing. From fifty degrees and spring-like pollution to snow in twenty-four hours. At least the snow blew away all of the yellow dust.
And Tuesday was the orientation for the kindergarten: speeches, meeting the parents (awkward, since most of them don't speak English), trying to get everybody to where they need to be, and meeting the new classes.
And Tuesday night was my second (and a half?) meeting with my language exchange family. The college student and his mother can easily learn English on their own, but I think they enjoy having a semi-friendly foreigner to spend time with them. The mother has cooked me some extravagant meals, and the son (Choi) assures me that she doesn't cook like this for the family. I enjoy them a lot. And yes, Sun Sung Duck (the fish lady) introduced me to them. This is so great, but I end up staying late. I was there until after ten o'clock.
Wednesday was the first day of the kindergarten. It went OK, but there were too many crying kids. I don't deal well with this. I find myself saying to them, "There's no crying in kindergarten or baseball," and then I start to laugh. This doesn't help.
Today seemed to go OK, but plenty more crying. I don't know what to do except try to make them laugh. Someone recently mentioned to me about the love languages, communicating love through touch--well, with kids it's just so weird. In Korea, it's alright to pat kids on the head or even hug them, but the Westerner in me says this shouldn't be OK. I'm starting to get a little better. But only when they're crying.