pumping...air?

i never really think of my vocal cords as being controlled by muscles until i have to teach after a lengthy break. then, like any muscle that hasn't been used in a while (sidenote: there are too many of these in my body), my vocal cords remind me that they are, in fact, controlled by muscles and pumping air is no joke.

my new job has my vocal cords on a pretty serious workout: i talk for the majority of 5, 50 minute classes a day, 5 days a week. this calculates to 250 minutes a day, 1,250 minutes a week. a good deal of those 250 minutes a day are spent trying to talk over (or silence) chatty, giggly korean high school girls. and, to add just a little more intensity to the workout for my already strained vocal system, when i am walking to and from class, to and from lunch, or even sitting in my office, i have 700+ girls that all say "hi!" every time they see me. i think i have said "hi" over 10,000 times in the last few weeks.

don't get me wrong, i love teaching these girls. i love that they all want to talk to me in english outside the classroom (my goal this year is to get them to speak english more frequently than once a week in my class). i love how excited they get to say hi to me. but, my vocal cords, and the attached muscles, are suffering. i can feel them in their little place screaming out at me: "please stop talking! we are going to snap!" alas, i cannot stop. at least, not until september 19, 2012.

i was worried about all kinds of things before i came to korea:

will i like the food?
will i get lonely?
will i like my school?
will i be able to survive not knowing korean?
will i find friends, both korean and american?
will i be able to adapt my teaching experience to high school? to korea? to esl?
will i miss my family so much that i die?

no, no, dear friends, these are not the things i should have been worried about. what i should have been worried about were those little muscles in my throat suffering permanent damage from excessive exercise.