General Update (for Adam)

So. I haven't been updating lately, and for that I apologize--apparently people read this. Well...I know from personal experience (www.thesuperficial.com), you can get addicted to reading just about anything on the internet, so I understand. Things here have been humming along a little too fast for me. I'm ready for a break. My job (for those of you who tuned in during the commercial break I teach English in a bunch of different nursery schools and at after school programs around Berlin) has been taking off like crazy, despite me being put on probation after a parent complained*. My boss didn't fire me. She just keeps giving me more hours. Which I don't really understand, since all of the other girls that work for her are trained teachers and I'm not. And I have trouble dealing with kids with behavioral problems. Yeah, okay, everyone does--otherwise they wouldn't be called "kids with behavioral problems", they'd be called something like "little human beings". Seriously, though, some of these kids are little fucking monsters. And because we're a private company, the boss wants every last child she can get. However, when I've got a class of 12 kids and even one of them is hyperactive, the whole thing goes downhill faster than you can imagine. On the whole, it's not terrible, but the overall stress of it is starting to get to me. I've got 17 classes in like, six different places so I'm always running around or waiting for some train or something. Keeping track of all the different classes and who's doing what, who has what prior knowledge, etc. etc. it's a pain in the ass. I like working with kids, but I don't know.

*Before you start thinking that I caned a small German child or something, the mother was a total witch, complained about the class size, the time of day, the classroom, how the class was structured...pretty much everything. To my boss of course. And then she turned in a contract for her kid anyway. Fucking people.

So I'm not that ecstatic about work. And I've somehow managed to pick up a sore throat (little kids are also germ mangnets), which makes establishing my authority with hyperactive German six and seven year olds a little difficult. Safe to say I'm not going to be reproducing for the next 3-5 years. This job has SO scared the baby-making thoughts away. However, cause I don't like to complain about a situation that I theoretically control, I've got another job lined up for July. I'm under contract for the rest of the school year, and I'm stubborn enough to fight it out, even if it's not so great, but after that's done, I'm going to start working in a parent-initiative pre-school. It's small, it's in one place, the head-woman is down to earth--and they need a native English speaker to color and read stories to the kids. I mean, of course I'll have to change diapers and tie shoes and all that jazz, but it'll be less stressful WITH healthcare benefits and money I can live on. I'm just hoping that the fucking Auslanderbeörde gets their shit together and issues me a visa and a work permit before April--because otherwise things will just become hopelessly complicated. Or more so than they already are.

Then of course come the questions:
Is this actually what I really want, or am I just killing time?

If I am just killing time, what am I waiting for?

If this is really what I want...is it enough?


It's the last one that gets me. I must ask myself about a thousand times a day if the life I have here is "enough". I've gotten to the point where I just shake my head and smile at people who ask me if this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. It's an idiotic question, but they're just trying to understand. And the whole 'picking up and leaving your home country'-bit isn't something that everyone gets. I don't always get it. A lot of the time it's a fun-filled adventure. Other times, it's comic. And then there are the days when I ask myself what in god's name I'm doing here, and why I don't go home and start an ordinary life where people watch baseball and celebrate Thanksgiving and don't freak out if you go barefoot.

But enough about that. That's just the daylight-savings time talking. It's dark and cold here and that makes me restless. Thank god for gyms and twice-weekly yoga courses, otherwise I'd flip out entirely. I've been working out a bunch, but this week is automatically stricken due to sickness. I get home and I'm so exhausted, I could sleep for a week. Speaking of which, I'm going to go make myself a pot of peppermint tea and drink the whole goddamned thing. Take that, immune system!