Yammer

This week was as stressful, for once, as most other teachers' weeks are all the time, like Pat and Roman's. The spectre of the overdue student newspaper (I'm the sponsor) is hanging over me, it's too much trouble to ask the tech people for help so screw doing it online, I'm just going to lay it out and xerox it. And that won't happen until AFTER the break, the xeroxing, at least.

I helped w/props for the student play "After Juliet" (a story about life among the Montagues and Capulets after R. and J.'s suicides) so that was three late nights this week.

Parent conferences were yesterday, I had to keep explaining why kids don't have a ton of homework and why spelling isn't that important.

I still haven't filed an extension for my taxes, oh shit. John Farrell was here on Tuesday for Michael P.'s peace project, he was a charmer, bright blue eyes, played guitar and sang a song for me there at his CD sale table in the hall.

There's a university student following me around all week to see what ESL is like, what with one thing and another she's not seeing much. Yesterday the ninth graders never showed up to the combo 8-9 class; they were practicing for their PE dance show which somehow I hadn't received the news about, surprise. So the 8th graders and the student and I trooped over to the gym to watch the show, very amusing to see Igor, Vova, and Stepan in the gym dancing, not in ESL class with me yelling at them to stop speaking Russian.

Last night I came back after the play to discover H2O all over the bathroom floor from the washer, who knows what happened? I'm leaving for Germany/Lviv on Sat., now I wish I had a few days off in between, before family/social overload.

AND the government collapsed....why did it have to happen this week?

This evening I left the Actor Dom, it was a lovely night so I walked through Taras Shevchenko Park and heard music. Up on a wooden stage, six people were dancing, a line/contra dance, to what sounded like English medieval/Georgian/Jane Austen era music on a tape player. Facing each other, stepping rhythmically, taking each other's hands, back and forth. I was charmed. No matter how the day went, I live in a city where I can see people dancing in the middle of the night.