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282/365 This was so good. #fallphotochallenge #daythirtynine https://www.instagram.com/p/CYK01OAlrz5/?utm_medium=tumblr

282/365 Okay but candid shots are my absolute favorite. #fallphotochallenge #daythirtynine https://www.instagram.com/p/CGJYA_8F8OL/?igshid=jpkdwuzakxjp

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Day #39 Day 39 was testerday! 3 days out of business! But i'm back! I promisse! Stay tunned! Follow the stories! . #stayathomejournal #daythirtynine #dontpanic #longdays #staythefuckhome #illustration #contemporaryart #portugueseillustration #portugueseillustrator #portugueseillustrators #worldillumination #contemporary #artistaspt #pt #minimal #portugueseillustrations #p3top #gerador #instiesgerador #covid #covid19 #coronavirus #corona #virus #osbigodesdamaria (em Porto, Portugal) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_QTnv9HKYi/?igshid=1q9spdmmzs67r

The Break Up Blog - Day Thirty Nine

This is getting harder and harder to do every day.

Don’t get me wrong, keeping a blog about my feeling since breaking up with X has been helpful and even cathartic to an extent. But dredging up every moment in my memory and every feeling that comes with it is exhausting.

I slept alright save for the hours when I kept waking up and stressing about class. Every Friday, the students now have to write a diary entry in the books that C designed. Simple in theory, right? Except the elementary students at our school seem to genuinely have zero English skills. Or they have the requisite skills, but get completely flustered when they actually have to use it, kinda like me and my ambiguous relationship with Mandarin.

So I changed the topics for grades 3 and 4 and thought that simplifying their task would help by writing vocabulary on the board. It kinda worked with grade 3 and all the students in my class managed to write a few sentences each.

But grade 4?

For 40 minutes, I sincerely thought that I was in a zoo and all the wild animals had gotten loose. One of my autistic students had a very OCD day and wouldn’t stop shouting out ‘The bus isn’t here!’ in Korean, too many of my boys were queuing up in front of the classroom computer to use the online dictionary. And of course, SB had a dumb fight with with another student, E, and legit walked out of my class and slammed the door on top of it.

I’d love to say that the latter pissed me off simply because SB was in the middle of it. But he’s actually been relatively well-behaved in class in the last two weeks, almost like he’s had a lobotomy. And honestly, by the time he pulled that crap on me, I was too exhausted and dumb-founded to take offence. Now that I’m thinking on it now, I definitely need to tell SH about what happened in class. I hate to bother her about it because she already has to deal with this nonsense as their homeroom teacher, but I’ve just had it with the total disregard for my authority in class.

I was forced to sit in the grade 6 homeroom and wait for them even though I knew they wouldn’t make it for class while having their school event during the day. I don’t get why the homeroom teachers force the foreign teachers to hang about like chumps during school events in the unlikelihood that the event will finish early and we’ll be able to pick up the slack with the dregs of the class period? It’s starting to feel like I went back to university two years ago and got a teaching certificate for nothing. I’m just an over-glorified babysitter at this point in my life and it sucks.

N came to find me while I kept the grade 6 classroom warm (or chilled in this case because the afternoon was hot af). She wanted to have her ‘official’ conversation with me about renewing my contract at the school. I did change things up a bit when N mentioned tried to persuade me to consider applying for a teaching position in the high school department of our school. I initially wanted to do that months ago, but ML was pretty adamant that I was unable to change the terms of my contract since my school only hires high school teachers in the second semester and my contract ends in February next year. Never mind the fact that I initially interviewed for a high school position at my school before coming to my city, but got recruited into the elementary department at the last second when one of the teachers broke his contract in the middle of the school year. But who really cares about minor details like that?

I told N I’d keep an open mind about it if she could swing things for me to work teach high school instead. I stopped considering it before when I thought that ML would stay in the managerial position for another year. But C told me that ML’s going back to Korea next year, so working under a new manager might actually be better. H might get pissed off at me for switching departments though; she’d probably take it as a personal affront to her management style. It is in part because of that, but honestly, I’m just done in general with this school. It’s too much bullshit layered with bullshit at every turn.

After my meeting with N, I went back to my office, only for H to talk to me about a punishment I gave my fifth graders two days when they wouldn’t shut up in class. Instead of disciplining the students in my own way, H suggested that I turn the classroom in a democracy and let the students decide on their own punishments and rewards in the near future. It’s a great idea in theory, but now that I think about it, it’s basically an FU to the teacher. As it turns out, I’m pretty much irrelevant in my own classroom.

And people actually wonder why teachers want to leave this school...

I saw N and ML talking out of the corner of my eye while H talked to me. I guess N gave ML the ‘good news’ about me wanting to leave. I could care less at this point. H’s eyes looked strangely red-rimmed during our talk, like she was seconds away from crying. I wonder if she heard about my news already? Who knows and honestly, who cares at this point?

I’m over it.

Still, I sat with CI at lunch and we had a good talk about our different classroom woes. He’s become a really good work buddy, I’m glad that C picked him out from a sea of what was probably a lot of crap teachers. Even talking to N about some of my minor grievances helped too. I even found time during the day to perform surgery on a clay doll one of my third grade girls made that had its leg and sword hilt (I don’t know what kids are into these days, lol) ripped off by her classmate. I went home to get my glue gun because the departmental ones are suddenly missing and I sutured the old sport’s injuries. Then I left said doll in the third grade homeroom, I hope my little chica finds it there.

All of this dumb shit that happened - It’s ok really when I think about it. Now I know that I’m done with being treated this way. Good luck to my school principal with finding teachers that are half as competent and caring as C, me and even CI, even though he’s staying another year.

After all the fuckery at work and the number that X pulled on me, I’m done with people taking me for a James Blunt in my professional and personal capacities.

‘James Blunt’ in this case is British rhyming slang. Do yourself a favour and look it up, it’ll give you a good laugh.

I may look like a ‘James Blunt’, I may even act like a ‘James Blunt’ when I’m taking the piss. But don’t get it twisted: I am not a fucking James Blunt by any stretch of the imagination. You can’t fuck with me and expect me to treat you the same way ever again.

It only needs to happen once. And after that, I’m done with you. I may smile at you and even help you with things from time to time. But I will never open myself up to you again.

That’s what happened to X in the end and I can see how it will happen with some of my current colleagues as the months progress. I thought it was kind of C watching C and H’s friendship turn to shit in real time when H became our manager. But I get how it happened: when you get a little of anything good, it makes you selfish and you end up turning on the people around you.

I did that when I dated X. She became the centre of my universe and I lost track of everything and everyone. I even had a huge fight with P and G because of X when I used too much bandwidth from the family router to video call X every day for a year.

That was a really bad fight and the way my siblings looked at me while it happened still haunts me. It’s like they saw me, but an uglier version, and they didn’t like it one bit.

I shudder when I think of that memory, especially when it was all for nothing with X. I nearly lost my relationship with my brother and sister over X. And what the fuck was even the point of it all?

I don’t ever want to be that way again the next time I fall in love. I want to go into the whole affair with my eyes completely open.

There were some positives at work. Besides having some good heart-to-hearts, my colleagues really liked the coconut tarts I baked for them. Even if they were just blowing smoke up my ass, it felt good to hear the compliments and know that I’m not sucking at this too.

I’m feeling really tired today, so I hope I have enough energy to exercise in a little while. I ordered dinner from a chicken restaurant below my apartment complex, I’ll cook something tomorrow. Since R wants me to charge me an arm and a leg for a physiotherapy consultation, I made an appointment at a local clinic tomorrow instead so a doctor can look at my right arm that keeps twinging whenever I move it. I hope someone speaks English there, I’m tired of floundering about like a beached whale with zero Chinese speaking skills.

My sinuses are still pestering me, but not as bad as before. I still have to check through my student diaries this weekend and mark and correct them. That’s a problem that can wait till tomorrow after I’ve had a good night’s sleep. D’s birthday gift finally arrived, I also have to figure out when I can drop it off at her apartment.

I just want to rest this weekend and not think about anything. After Sunday, I’ll be done with my current workout programme; I might switch to something simpler like swimming after this.

I’m just done.

My body and brain need a proper rest.

I might stop writing these blog entries after Sunday is over, I’ll see how I feel. Right now, I don’t want to think and just drift off deeper into myself.

#breakupblog #daythirtynine

190/365 I love my creativity...even if I struggle through so many dry spells. #summerphotochallenge #daythirtynine #ilovethisaboutme https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzwrhz4lPtY/?igshid=2a891ktesjft

#summerphotochallenge #daythirtynine #ilovethisaboutme

All these angels... #dontblink #doctorwho #Copenhagen #daythirtynine

#dontblink #copenhagen #daythirtynine #doctorwho