The Rosebush

Today didn’t start well and was going the same way as yesterday.  Some crap things happened, but at the very least this afternoon I bought a Peter Storm waterproof jacket for the Burmese tropical storms and also a very funky pink and black rucksack.

I like the fact that my new jacket says ‘Storm Tech’ on it which makes me sound really hard.

It got worse.

I’m having one of those days.   It started off badly with some nightmares and since then, everything’s gone wrong.  I’ve been let down, AGAIN, by the person who is never supposed to let me down, I’m fed up of being fucked around.  I’ve been caught behind a bus on a narrow lane when I was already late for an appointment, and all kinds of other crappy things have happened, leading ultimately to me being in a foul mood and expecting the rest of the day to be as crap or even more crap than it has been so far.

Today… I would like to recommend some healthy food:
Breakfast: a bowl of fruit (papaya, blueberries, melon, sharon fruit) with low fat yogurt.
Lunch: Ainsley Harriot’s ‘chargrilled veg cous cous’, topped with a tin of slimming world lime and black pepper tuna, topped with washed rocket and cherry tomatoes, sprinkled with sainsbury’s 7 seed mix.

Yes, I am trying to be marginally more healthy than I was last week. I am also going to do 30 sit ups before bed each night. (yeah, right, like that’s gonna happen!!) Oh and obviously, reduced amounts of booze. No more red wine when I’m at home with the ‘rents on weekdays. I’ll still share the odd bottle of white wine with J at his place, cos that’s one of my favourite things in the world, but no more habitual glasses of wine when I’m at home during the week.

Would like to lose about 6lb before I leave…

I have this week off and I’m suddenly realising how much I have to do in preparation for the big day.

I even bought bubble wrap today and put some books into a box!

But most importantly - please, if you are reading this, can you spend 30 seconds dropping me an email with your postal address?  Even if you think/know I already have it somewhere, I have probably lost it, and how can I send postcards and goodies to my friends if I don’t know your full address and postcode?

Would really appreciate everybody’s help on this one - then I can just copy and paste into a document and print it off to take with me.

Thanks guys :)  Anybody who wants my postal address in Burma can have it as a reply to their email x

I can’t believe I’ve turned into all my teachers in just a week.  Teenagers, eh? :)  What a challenge!  Little b*ggers have been making my life fairly difficult the last few days, but I am still afloat and ready to kick ass tomorrow if any of them play up.

It is quite important to have unlimited supplies of boundless energy when it comes to teaching surly teenagers who would rather be anywhere else than in your lesson.  This is not an easy thing to manage but I hope I’m doing okay.  One of my students who had to move to a different group told me he preferred my class to his new one, and that’s really encouraging considering most of the little sh*ts have perfected their “I can’t believe you actually expect me to move from my arse and go and sit at that other table” attitude.  Today, I told them to get into 3 groups of 4 and they just looked at me, like… “Er, are you actually being serious when you say that?” So I surprised them with a big old smile on my face when I bellowed “***~~~MOOOOOOOOVE!!!!!!~~~***” in my best shouty teacher voice.  It worked…

Yesterday however, I was not feeling so good about the whole thing.  I’m sure every teacher questions their ability now and again, and with very little experience, it’s bound to happen to me more often than to others - at least I recognise the uncertainty for what it is… just getting used to teaching teenagers in an environment which completely drains them of their motivation to learn anything or have to use their brains.  I just need to work out how to convince them that it’s a hell of a lot more interesting if they just put a bit of effort in.  I think they possibly realised that today when the lesson started slowly but ended on a pretty good note.  They need to trust me when I ask them to do stuff, and believe that there is a good reason why I’m making them do certain activities.  But trust doesn’t come overnight and I’m a new face, so I guess they’re not doing so badly considering, and maybe I’m not either

Trying to convince J that some fun needs to be on the menu for the weekend, for both our sakes really.  Would be really nice to be able to let my hair down, just us, getting a change of scenery.  I sure as hell need a night out or some kind of pampering. It’s as close as I’m going to get to a holiday for a long time… I have a week off from 23rd July but I don’t have anybody to spend it with!! How frustrating is that?? My only chance for a bit of a trip somewhere or some well-needed (and frankly, deserved) time out, and I can’t even take advantage!! Gonna be a week of sitting round the house I guess.  It’s a shame

It’s all gone a bit crazy just lately…

Started summer school last week, and hit the ground running with the teaching.  Also had to do a full day excursion on wednesday - 3 museums in one day, followed by a 45 minute walk across Hyde Park to get to the bus pick up point, whilst simultaneously trying to keep track of 16 foreign teenagers.  THEN had to plan the next day’s lesson that evening!  Very tiring!  But it’s going okay… I can see why people usually do summer schools for only 2 or 3 weeks though!

This week, I’ve got double lessons on Tues and Thurs, which means 6 HOURS of teaching on each day… that is a lot.  I am not looking forward to it… but it does mean that I have Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons off, and Saturday as well.

Weekend has been spent in various different ways - Friday night at 6pm I went for my second Hepatitis B injection, and this time I managed to pass out completely.  Never done *that* before!!  Was really rather proud of myself for that one.  Well if you’ve ever had a Hep B injection, you’ll know that they are a bit sore!  Anyway, I have 2 more inoculations tomorrow pm and I’m worried I’ll make a tit of myself by fainting again!  Oh well, at least it’s a different clinic!!  Why DO people faint after injections, hm?  When I say ‘people’, I mean me, since nobody else I know is such a total wuss!  Go me.

Rest of weekend has been helping J pack up boxes and move stuff to a temporary and highly secret location while he gets the move finalised.  It’s been a difficult weekend for me in more ways than one actually, and I’m still struggling to maintain a healthy balance of self-respect and patience.  But I’m leaning more and more towards throwing caution to the wind, feeling perhaps there really isn’t anything left to lose, or at least nothing worth worrying about just now anyway.

In other news… I still haven’t booked my flight. I really must do that.

Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode of Faintergirl -  ‘Dustbiter strikes again’.

You absolute muppet.