How Are Things?

It's been a little while since my last post. Sorry 'bout that.

The kid that I got suspended is still having issues. His lovely mum approached my teammate a couple of weeks ago out in public and told her how much she despises the "insert name of school here" teachers. She ended up yelling at *Shelly and *Shelly ran away and hid behind a pillar until the mom left. Crazy, huh?

Then yesterday, I noticed the student wasn't at school. Turns out he's been psychologically evaluated and will not be returning to the school. It's so weird how things can turn out, isn't it?

Although, I saw him here today, so I think his parents must be sending him here until they figure out what to do with him. Fantastic.

Stephen and I went to the opera house last Friday night to see the ballet, Swan Lake. It was pretty good, actually! Surprisingly, I liked the music more than the dancing. I was surprised at how much of the music sounded familiar. Tchaikovsky. Did I butchar that spelling?

After the ballet, we went to a German restaurant with our friends, *Joe and *Valerie. We had big plates of french fries and a huge platter of sausages. I was so exhausted from the busy week that I was falling asleep at the table by the end of the meal. We had a good time.

Then, on Saturday night, we went out with Shelly and her husband, *Mark and another teacher couple to an early dinner and had a delicious meal. We stopped at the neighborhood bar to send off one of the teachers who has quit and is headed to Hong Kong this week. We then made our way to Shelly's with a cake in hand that our driver had given us. His son had turned 1 on Saturday, so he gave US a cake! Weird tradition, but I like it. The cake was pretty good and we had a fun time getting to know our new friends.

We went to church on Sunday, for the second time, and met a lot of new people. The pastor's wife invited us over for lunch this coming Sunday and there will be several other people there for us to meet.

I am spent. It turns out that I have a much heavier timetable than most of the teachers here (yet I am getting paid the same) and they are talking about making us teach our class more by replacing one of the Russian classes with more English. Yipee-skippy.

We still don't have resources and curriculum. Teaching is....well, you know.

I have a large stack of grading to tackle.

Dos Vadanya.

*names have been changed to protect the innocent