The City – 24th July 2024

You can have me over and over again
But your hands will never reach all the way around
Your honeymoon here might seem fantastic
But soon enough your feet will touch the ground

Here now where it all seems right
Sipping coffee and getting scribble down
Trees dance shadows across the windows
And soon enough this will be your town

Inspired by this post at Spinning Visions and submitted to Living Poetry – city

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Today I’m feeling:

Not so bad.  I woke up a little unsure how I was feeling but pushed myself up and out of bed with a surprise alarm and kick-started myself with exercise that I really didn’t want to do but glad that I did.

I got inspired to write some new lessons after finding a podcast for teen girls, which I can easily adapt for my classes.  I guess I’m feeling a little more invigorated than the last few days at home.  I know that this is trying to tell me something but I’m kinda trying to ignore it!

Baipad didn’t come to school today, which is not unexpected.  She had messaged Fahmai already that she was crying all last night.

Today I’m grateful for:

Kru Mai reminding me that we needed to have 50% of our grading scores in the system. I saw a message in Thai about this at the weekend so I knew it was something being done but usually I don’t do anything unless instructed in English.

I had already been filling in scores over the last couple of months anyway, so it was no big deal to fill out the rest with the four hours I had free today.

The best thing about today was:

Feeling in control.  I felt above average all day without any wild highs or low lows and I felt that I could deal with everything that got thrown at me, which wasn’t much anyway.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Tomorrow is another event day and some of my grade 12 students are generally busy preparing things for it.  They asked me for free time tomorrow and I consented on the condition that they must submit a small piece of work by the end of the day for me.

It’s hard to consistently teach some of these classes as there are always students missing, being taken off to do other projects.  I’m getting used to it now.

Something I learned today?

Wipping came to class late and fake-crying because Kru Tan had scolded her and the team that performed in the drama competition a couple of weeks ago (despite coming second in the whole northern region!).

This evening I messaged Wipping to ask why they were still talking about it, assuming that only the winners went on to the next stage of the competition. She told me that the top 3 go on, so they will be under more pressure from Kru Tan to perform well. 

My guess is Kru Tan is old school, motivating them with threats, bullying and pressure.  All of the students involved are down and depressed about it but I’m trying to get them to deal with it and deflect away from that method of motivation.

Review your acts, Good and bad.

Every Wednesday morning now I sit in on the class that used to be assigned to me and help the students with their work.  I’m glad that the Thai teacher is ok with it because it fills a bit of my day rather than just sitting in the cafe until 2.30 and it’s a no pressure class, I can just help when I want and the rest of the time I’m preparing other lessons.

After school, I was starving and decided that I would ride up to the uni market to get food and could drop in on Baipad on the way to see how she was.  Perhaps a day off was what she needed because she seemed happy and over any residual grief from yesterday.  I took both her and her sister up to the market and we all got ourselves fed.