Today I feel much less passive-aggressive toward the homestay than I did last night, you'll probably be pleased to hear. The visiting family seems to have left our house, if the number of shoes in the entryway is any indication. I'm sure they will be back next week for Chuseok, but a temporary reprieve is welcome.
I did get really frustrated today at school by one of the guys who works in the office, but I'm over it now. Long story short, he wasted 20 minutes of my time trying to convey in Korean that he wanted me to record 40 minutes worth of dialogues onto an mp3 for his English club. That task is kind of annoying to begin with, but it was more annoying that he wasted so much of my time instead of asking my co-teacher to translate. Also, he seemed to feel awfully entitled to my help. I don't mind helping, usually, but it's not actually my job to do any English-related task for you. And he kept being like, "Oh, this is irritating to you. Oh, it's draining. I'm sorry."
And I'm like, "Well, yes. I'm not going to lie and act like it's my pleasure. Just shut up about it and press record." I didn't say that, obviously. Even if I had, he wouldn't have understood, at least. He's like, "Oh, you're so busy. You're always busy."
Well... yes. I plan 9 hours of lessons a week, and teach 16. It sometimes takes two hours to plan an hour of teaching, which means 18 hours of lesson planning, plus 16 hours of teaching. 34. I'm at school about 35 hours a week, give or take. So yes... when I'm at school, I try to keep myself busy, so that school doesn't bleed into home time, for reasons I've delineated ad nauseam here. I didn't try to explain that, so he said: "You shouldn't work so hard."
I'm like, "Get out of my English lab." Then a bunch of students irritated me with random outbursts, like: "Tattoo! Not stylish!" (in Korean). So I just left, figuring that my concentration was broken. But rather than going home still irritated, I went for a long walk, exploring our village. I walked about 45 minutes in the opposite direction of home, a way I'd never gone before. Then I walked back. By then, I was feeling less irritated, so I got on the bus and came home. I finished John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces on the bus, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought it would. The cover and blurb make it seem really... well... stupid. But it was quite funny and clever, and was a quicker read than I expected. That was number 37, and including number 38, which I forgot to add to the list, I'm way ahead of pace. I'd like to try to wrap them all up before November, so that I can not even have to think about it while I'm writing. It'd be nice if it was a goal that was done. It'd be all too easy for me to distract myself with reading during the 30 days when I'm supposed to be writing up a storm. No way. If I continue at the pace I've been going, inspired by Tim's collection, I'll finish up 12 more books in the next two months.
So yeah... bad attitude moment, but sort of curbed by long walk. I'm a little behind in lesson planning because of recording and leaving early, but I'll get ready in the morning. Mostly it's just getting ready and getting copies made for Beauty High School on Saturday, but at least, after that, I won't have to worry about it for a couple weeks. And my favorite class (special class) is cancelled tomorrow. That's really sad, but it means a little extra time for lesson planning.
I've been dreading climbing into bed the past few days... I feel like I usually fall asleep almost immediately after hitting the pillow. Or, I'm using the computer until I'm exhausted and fall asleep staring at it. But lately I've been shutting down the computer and crawling into bed in relative peace... and it's made it substantially harder to fall asleep. I was awake for at least 30 minutes trying to fall asleep the past few days, despite taking a sleep-inducing Benadryl, and it's disconcerting, since I usually have no trouble falling asleep at all. I didn't even nap the past few days, which has caused me trouble in the past.
The good news?... Nothing's coming. Try me again tomorrow.
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