iftar dinner

just came back from iftar dinner - the meal breaking the daily fast during ramadan.

one of the things i like about this school is the small size. its a bit more like a community and i know virtually all the students since i either teach them now or have in the past.

earlier i wrote about being tortured by the family of kids with a genetic sugar high, now i write something a bit more positive. we have a lot of turkish (and other moslem) kids at the school and every year some parent invites some of the teachers for dinner. this year it was a couple of kids who are really wonderful. i feel like i'm channeling my mom when i say things like 'good kids come from good parents' but these kids are just great so it was quite pleasant going to their house. i was showed their bedroom (which was crazy neat) and we had a wonderful meal which mom had started cooking the night before. dessert was chocolate cake, baklava, and candied pumpkin!! homemade turkish food is pretty awesome. and the she gave us a gift of turkish coffee when we left.

all in all a lovely evening - my stomach is bursting and my brain has shut off - i had actually intended to do some work tonite. alas, it will have to wait til the morning.

sad passing

sadly and this is truly sad, richard wright pianist/keyboardist of pink floyd has died. he wrote some of my faves from the catalog. great gig in the sky is one of those totally awesome and beautiful songs that i pretty much butcher and make the ears of anyone in the vicinity bleed anytime i try to sing. no words but great vocals evocative. this of course ends a long held dream of mine of seeing pink floyd in concert.

the imagery for the video for learning to fly haunted me from the time i was 8 until i saw it almost a decade later though i didnt then know it was pink floyd. i went through a massive pink floyd period, listening to it non stop. it was like a whole world opened up to me when i got the wish you were here album. so much of my thinking and life at that point involved pink floyd. whether i was listening to them while contemplating an important decision (important for then) or easing my sorrow over something. it was/is music that fueled my imagination or soothed my emotions (kinda like those chicken soup books but way way better and less hokey). a lot of the songs spoke to the loneliness and isolation of my teenage self allowing me to acknowledge it and providing an outlet for angst. cocooned by the music - definitely best listened to loud or headphones - i and everything was okay. it definitely is part of the soundtrack of my young adulthood and life. listening to a song now evokes memories of my then.

time, wish you were here, wearing the inside out, welcome to the machine, shine on you crazy diamond, high hopes, us and them, great gig in the sky, hey you, goodbye cruel world, vera, comfortably numb, run like hell, on the turning away - some of the best

teacher nightmare

i guess my subconscious is still fighting the return to work

i dont remember all of it, but i woke up at like 5am this morning from this dream.

a student, dont know who, in passing gave me chewing gum. i chewed it and later couldnt breathe. i was gasping for breath while by throat closed up and i was trying to give instructions on what to do in my absence.

i was laying on the lunchroom floor in a skirt that had flown up - not wearing my prettiest underwear and students were all about. it was later found that poison had been injected into the gum.

probably has nothing to do with school. but i seriously woke up with trouble breathing. maybe the cat had been messing with me, half suffocating me, giggling, before moving off my face.(i think shes a little mean).

dear lord, deliver me from . . .

its the end of the first week and mah feet are killing me!.

year 7 - ah so cute and tiny and sweet. except for that kid. you know who i'm talking about. the one who had 50 pixie sticks and a coke for breakfast.

this week i was teaching them geography and history so i was seeing them ALOT. and i tell you, it was a bit toooooo much. from the first day, i had no idea who he was, didnt know any names and i already knew him.

in the back of my mind i wondered if i am indeed that unlucky and apparently i am. i thought he was younger. i thought that i would be spared but i realize that it was only wishful thinking on my part.

for the past two years i taught the older brother and the older sister and i gotta tell you, the genes in the family dont spread to far. so he didnt have the pixie sticks and coke for breakfast, thats all encoded in his DNA and there is no way i can get away from it. the only silver lining i can think of is that the youngest kid is only 3 so i will definitely be gone before he enters secondary school.

i like to think that i help create a sense of familial closeness. for the rest of their lives they can reminisce about me and how i never let them talk and sat them away from all their friends, and other teacher things that serve to make kids miserable. the funny thing is that they are all pretty bright.

okay that was probably me in class but hey there werent more of me standing in line to make my teachers lives miserable

just hanging in there

i know its been eons since the last post and i was gonna write all this stuff about my summer holiday. that will come this weekend - i hope.

been a bit tired lately. we had 2 weeks of preplanning and monday was the first day of school. i tell you, am just out of shape for this working thing. i get home and its all i can do just to eat (am laying it on a bit thick here to excuse my extreme laziness).

but seriously. its nice to see the kiddies again and the little ones look so cute. but am so tired by the end of the day. its like going to they gym after not going for 10 months. the funny thing is seeing the differences a summer can make. they all come back more tan but its like some of them grew like a whole foot in a couple of months. the boys voices have gotten deeper/ and or are breaking. cant even tell you how that is sometimes an answer to my prayers. some of them have the highest voices, which pierce my eardrums every time they ask a question. baby fat has melted leaving them looking strangely adult like. then again ears and noses got bigger and heads became more misshapen. all in all, its nice to see them again

am pretty sure this is my last year teaching but since have been in school my entire life, i dont know if i'll be able to handle the real world of no vacations and long days.