A few things
We are not dead. Yes, crappy things have been happening in Indonesia in the last few days. Crappy things happen in Indonesia every day. Crappy things happen in America every day. But we aren't dead. I promise. We don't live in the slums of Baghdad; we live in a ritzy bedroom community where the greatest danger is being slightly sore after an intense massage at one of our many local day spas. Seriously.
(warning, political rant ahead...those leaning to the far right should proceed with caution)
The media in the U.S. is excellent at fearmongering, particularly when it comes to making the rest of the world seem evil. How else do you think Dubya got reelected? Terrified people are very easy to manipulate.
(end political rant)
Anyway, the point is, we're fine. Really.
No, we haven't updated the blog for a while. Sorry. There are several reasons for this.
One, um...we're busy. Really insanely busy. This is the busiest time of year for us. We are both preparing to send samples of student work, along with extensive write-ups from us, to the IBO for a moderation process, to make sure we're doing our jobs correctly. Some of us are doing this alongside very, very difficult coworkers. (Singular, a coworker, if we're being accurate.) In addition, we are still teaching regular classes. We hit the ground running at 5:45 a.m. and once we're home, we still have work to get done.
Two, our internet at home is crappy at best; sometimes it takes me an hour to get a connection that's stable enough to send one single e-mail. Our internet at school works but as you can probably guess, we don't get a lot of time these days to dink around on the world wide web. Plus, it's still very slow. It can take up to 15 minutes to get e-mails to open some days.
Finally...we are so busy that most days we have nothing to blog about. I sincerely hope that no one is so hard up for entertainment that they need a daily dose of us saying, "Today I got up and went to school and taught and had lunch then taught some more. Then I came home and graded papers, had dinner, planned some lessons and went to bed." Seriously, most days here are no different than they would be in Nebraska or wherever. Except we have geckos. But really, that's it.
I know I sound cranky. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be too much, and we are infinitely glad that people back home still love us and want to know how we're doing and worry about us, etc. And I know some people are probably thinking, "Well, even if it's not much it still is nice to know how you're doing!" I know. We're fine, and just because we don't blog every single day doesn't mean we're not fine or that we're thinking, "Mwahahaha, screw everyone from home! Forget them!" It means we're just busy. Sorry if that isn't understandable and sorry if I sound grumpy because I honestly don't mean to. I guess I don't know what else to say other than guilt trips aren't going to make us feel like we're missed...they just make us feel miserable. Being miserable sucks. It's hard enough to be here some days, especially when some of us (me) are kind of doubting our decision to stay a third year. Guilt trips don't equal support, even if they're well meant and are just a misguided way of letting us know we're missed and loved. Just say "we miss you" or "we love you" instead. We miss and love everyone back home and so again I'm sorry if this comes across as not very nice. I don't mean to be that way, I'm just being honest. I'm so happy people read our blog and occasionally e-mail us or leave comments. I'm sorry if we're not always as communicative as some would like. I know people are busy and not everyone always has the time to e-mail...that's OK. Please, please, please let it be OK that sometimes we're just busy, too.
I promise we will blog more when we have time. I blog so much normally because writing is one way I relieve stress and I haven't hardly had the time to even do that lately. Once things settle down, once March is over and we've had our happy little holiday to Istanbul, I will probably blog so much you'll get sick of me. Until then, we will do what we can and if anything major happens over here that impacts us in any way, good, bad or otherwise, we will let people at home know as soon as we possibly can. I promise.
We're still planning to be home for a little more than a month this summer. Hopefully we'll get our patriotic fill at Seward's Fourth of July (which I'm guessing will be way more fun since I won't be covering it for the paper, forced to listen to Clarky K. repeat "apple pie on the Fourth of July, what could be more fitting or appropriate?" until my ears bleed). We also hope to take in a DMB concert and spend some quality time seeing the important sights of St. Louis-all of which (to us) are people, of course.
Nothing else is new here, really. We're fine, just busy and stressed. Our students are fine, also just busy and stressed. Our cat is fine. He is neither busy nor stressed, as he sleeps 20+ hours a day. This moderation process is the greatest source of our stress, but it all has to be finished by the time we have our quarter break at the end of March, so we can go to Istanbul without that hanging over our heads. (Also, I'm getting the feeling that after working so closely with certain individuals during this process, I am going to need to get on a plane and fly to another continent to escape said individual for a few days once this is over. Oh, and industrial-sized margaritas. I'm going to need a couple of those.)
See? Everything is OK. Again, I'm sorry for any snarkiness (don't you just love that word?) that may have occurred at any point in this posting. Thank you for missing us. We miss everyone, too. You have no idea how much.
(warning, political rant ahead...those leaning to the far right should proceed with caution)
The media in the U.S. is excellent at fearmongering, particularly when it comes to making the rest of the world seem evil. How else do you think Dubya got reelected? Terrified people are very easy to manipulate.
(end political rant)
Anyway, the point is, we're fine. Really.
No, we haven't updated the blog for a while. Sorry. There are several reasons for this.
One, um...we're busy. Really insanely busy. This is the busiest time of year for us. We are both preparing to send samples of student work, along with extensive write-ups from us, to the IBO for a moderation process, to make sure we're doing our jobs correctly. Some of us are doing this alongside very, very difficult coworkers. (Singular, a coworker, if we're being accurate.) In addition, we are still teaching regular classes. We hit the ground running at 5:45 a.m. and once we're home, we still have work to get done.
Two, our internet at home is crappy at best; sometimes it takes me an hour to get a connection that's stable enough to send one single e-mail. Our internet at school works but as you can probably guess, we don't get a lot of time these days to dink around on the world wide web. Plus, it's still very slow. It can take up to 15 minutes to get e-mails to open some days.
Finally...we are so busy that most days we have nothing to blog about. I sincerely hope that no one is so hard up for entertainment that they need a daily dose of us saying, "Today I got up and went to school and taught and had lunch then taught some more. Then I came home and graded papers, had dinner, planned some lessons and went to bed." Seriously, most days here are no different than they would be in Nebraska or wherever. Except we have geckos. But really, that's it.
I know I sound cranky. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be too much, and we are infinitely glad that people back home still love us and want to know how we're doing and worry about us, etc. And I know some people are probably thinking, "Well, even if it's not much it still is nice to know how you're doing!" I know. We're fine, and just because we don't blog every single day doesn't mean we're not fine or that we're thinking, "Mwahahaha, screw everyone from home! Forget them!" It means we're just busy. Sorry if that isn't understandable and sorry if I sound grumpy because I honestly don't mean to. I guess I don't know what else to say other than guilt trips aren't going to make us feel like we're missed...they just make us feel miserable. Being miserable sucks. It's hard enough to be here some days, especially when some of us (me) are kind of doubting our decision to stay a third year. Guilt trips don't equal support, even if they're well meant and are just a misguided way of letting us know we're missed and loved. Just say "we miss you" or "we love you" instead. We miss and love everyone back home and so again I'm sorry if this comes across as not very nice. I don't mean to be that way, I'm just being honest. I'm so happy people read our blog and occasionally e-mail us or leave comments. I'm sorry if we're not always as communicative as some would like. I know people are busy and not everyone always has the time to e-mail...that's OK. Please, please, please let it be OK that sometimes we're just busy, too.
I promise we will blog more when we have time. I blog so much normally because writing is one way I relieve stress and I haven't hardly had the time to even do that lately. Once things settle down, once March is over and we've had our happy little holiday to Istanbul, I will probably blog so much you'll get sick of me. Until then, we will do what we can and if anything major happens over here that impacts us in any way, good, bad or otherwise, we will let people at home know as soon as we possibly can. I promise.
We're still planning to be home for a little more than a month this summer. Hopefully we'll get our patriotic fill at Seward's Fourth of July (which I'm guessing will be way more fun since I won't be covering it for the paper, forced to listen to Clarky K. repeat "apple pie on the Fourth of July, what could be more fitting or appropriate?" until my ears bleed). We also hope to take in a DMB concert and spend some quality time seeing the important sights of St. Louis-all of which (to us) are people, of course.
Nothing else is new here, really. We're fine, just busy and stressed. Our students are fine, also just busy and stressed. Our cat is fine. He is neither busy nor stressed, as he sleeps 20+ hours a day. This moderation process is the greatest source of our stress, but it all has to be finished by the time we have our quarter break at the end of March, so we can go to Istanbul without that hanging over our heads. (Also, I'm getting the feeling that after working so closely with certain individuals during this process, I am going to need to get on a plane and fly to another continent to escape said individual for a few days once this is over. Oh, and industrial-sized margaritas. I'm going to need a couple of those.)
See? Everything is OK. Again, I'm sorry for any snarkiness (don't you just love that word?) that may have occurred at any point in this posting. Thank you for missing us. We miss everyone, too. You have no idea how much.
posted by Erin @ 9:49 PM
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