The Day of the Dead, and a Day in the Life

Hello all,

My two weeks of (mandatory, unpaid, uneventful) vacation are over and I have begun yet another term of school.

In some ways, I'm glad. Sitting around the house with nothing to do was starting to seriously fray my nerves by the end of vacation (like I was walking around in circles and biting my fingers).

For some reason, though, all my classes are seriously under-populated. This may be the reason--we're starting the term in the middle of a holiday which culminates this week with Pchum Ben. That's basically the Day of the Dead, Cambodian-style, and we get 3 days off for it (which for me means 3 days of sitting around with nothing to do while everyone abandons the city and closes all the stores). So we have 4 days of school sandwiched between 3 weeks total of time off. Wouldn't blame anyone for not showing up for the first week.

In other news, my internet has been severed since the people moved downstairs moved out. This way I don't have to drown my existence in a cyber stream anymore; I'm also not going to have anything to do when I don't feel well enough to go out, but am not totally bedridden. Like these upcoming 3 days.

My thyroid (or lack thereof) is still crushing my existence--how is it that I can sleep for eight hours, take a morning nap for an hour and a half, and then still feel so unbearably sleepy during the break between my evening classes? And the dark black degenerate rings under my eyes make me look like what I am--an EFL teacher in Southeast Asia. There are some days when I don't even want to look at myself in the mirror, because I know my appearance just confirms the stereotype that all of us are drug-addicts and alcoholics, even though I'm not.

I'm starting to think my hypothyroidism is in fact permanent, just like my EFL career. D:

Hopefully, though, my students will at least be awesome this term--I'm already having trouble with a monk who's older than me and isn't afraid to talk about me, loudly, to the rest of the class, in Khmer. I can never tell if students like that like me a lot, or if they're just bullies disrespecting and dehumanizing me. Given the intense, abusive bullying I suffered as a child, I tend to viscerally assume the latter, and I don't have much of a sense of humor about it, either.

Oh well, at least I'm getting paid. And it's full-time, too.

Here's hoping your Day of the Dead is good, no matter which culture you are a part of.