Good Talk, Bad Talk

Yesterday was really nice, actually, except for the very end. My Kindergarten kids have two days off as the teachers go for a meeting in some distant city, and so I got to sleep in. I didn't sleep that much, but it was so nice to have the option. Then I got a video call from JW, which totally made the day that much sweeter. We had a bit of an awkward discussion however, but it was totally my fault for reading too much into something he had said when it was never intended that way. We must that talked for two hours before he had to go for class and I had to get dressed.

Another strange incident with children though. P, a volunteer who recently left for university interviews seemed to attract strange men; I seem to attract strange children. I've had kids sticking their hands in my butt pockets and feeling around, kids hitting my breast (you know its not an accident when they squeeze), and kids randomly watch me as I open the door. Today, as I was sitting in the privacy of downstairs talking to JW, I saw the gate open. I thought someone had come home (I was the only one with a bit of a break) but there were no key searching sounds, so I went to check it out.

I pop my head out of the window and find three bite sized kids, one of whom has taken off her shoes and is trying on some heels (we keep all our shoes outside as it's taboo to wear them inside), fooling aroung in the courtyard. They see me, scream and yell that they've been caught, and run away. 10 minutes later they come visiting again, but they were gone by the time I stepped out. I have no idea what they wanted, but there could be a new story on the street that the house is occupied by an unemployed, pyjamas wearing psycho lady. It amused me to no end as I got dressed and went to my first class of the day, where I teach physics to a single pupil.

That done, I grabbed the new part-time volunteer and went to tutor in International girls. It's a rather ironic title since they're all Thai with not an international bone in their bodies except for the fact that they go to an international school and might get to go abroad to school at some point. I had to help Rose with a summary of the Cultural Revolution, a relatively simple thing, but the exercise made me so frustrated. What do you say when a sentence is so jumbled and badly punctuated that if I hadn't been listening to her for the past hour I'd have no idea what she was talking about.

What the hell are we doing here? Are they actually learning anything? When they keep looking up words that they looked at not ten minutes before. If they don't respect you enough to apologize for being an hour late, what business do we have trying to teach them, essentially wasting our time on kids who don't care?

So that was my day; memories of the past carried me up to the happiness ceiling, and then reality comes in on tiny, angry wings to burst the bubble. I suppose it's par for the course, but does it always have to be so. . . shocking?