August 12th, 2022
I survived the first week
Well, here I am sitting on my balcony at 3:56 PM on Friday afternoon. I am able to gleefully confirm that I survived my first week. My first week back in the classroom, full time in person, since before Covid, my first week of teaching second grade and my first week of international teaching. All of these things are phenomenally exciting. I’m here for roughly 3 months, the last day of my contract is October 26 which is a Wednesday. It seems like a really random day, but it must have something to do with the return date of the teacher on leave. To be honest I’ve vacillated multiple times a day all week about whether or not I should be counting days until this is over. It is a tremendous amount of work, for a bunch of reasons. Of course teaching is always ALWAYS work, but to be fair to myself, I haven’t had to really embrace the rigor of teaching for the last year. I subbed on and off when I was home and able, and the rest of the subbing I did was in the virtual program with my school district. So being ready and energetic enough for this experience, well it’s gonna take some time for me to adjust. Fortunately I only have 15 students in my class, which is a fantastic doable number. And the maximum number of students attending on any day this week was 13. Two students already out sick pretty much every day.
It was NOT my intention to NOT blog daily this week. Honestly it was through sheer determination that I was even able to briefly update the blog on Monday as I haven’t been this tired in a long time. I left school at 4 o’clock every day this week up until today when I left at 3:30pm. I came home and walked Nichol, had something to eat, walked Nichol again and then fell into the bed. That is the sum total of my ‘activity’ after work. So my apologies for being off the grid.
I did get a doggy daycare lined up for Nichol. He went on Wednesday this week and then again today. In the mornings, the driver can pick Nichol up between seven and 715 or between eight and 815. So since I have to be at school by 7 AM neither of these times are great. But then it occurred to me that I could run home at 7:50am (thank you 2 minute walk) when my teaching partner is running her lesson and get him to the Driver and then just go back to school. So that’s what I did on Wednesday and it worked beautifully. I did tell them that I would pick Nichol up from the daycare after work on Wednesday. When I got there it was pretty chaotic in the clinic. There was a lot of people coming and going so they had a staff member walk me down to the daycare to pick up Nichol. The doggie daycare is about half a block down from the vet clinic. When I got there the rest of the dogs went absolutely nutzzzzzz! So one of the ladies inside the daycare brought him out and he was pretty excited to see me but also crawling up as high as he could on top of her shoulders to get away from the other dogs. As they were all jumping up. They sent me some pictures in the afternoon to show me that he was happy and eating, and I could tell that he was very tired but really happy to be there. (He stays in an area with dogs his size). We walked back up to the clinic and they asked me to come inside. I was confused at first and then they told me that before the dogs leave every day, they quickly check them to make sure they’re OK. So even though I was picking him up they still had to check him. Of course he was OK so we were sent off. I told themI would send him back on Friday and have the driver pick up and drop off. We went for a short walk and then I ordered a Grab to take us home. Just as we were getting into the Grab a torrential monsoon started. We were very happy to be in the Tuktuk rather than trying to walk!! It would take us about 30 minutes to walk from the daycare back to my apartment. Or it was a 12 minute Tuktuk ride. Certainly reasonable use of a dollar to get a Grab in that rain. That’s the most common time of day that there’s rain here between 4 and 7 PM.
Nichol very happily jumped right into the car today when the driver got here and tolerated me taking a few pictures. They’re going to drop him off between 5 and 6 PM they said. It’s a pretty long day for him and I’m expecting that he will be very tired when he gets home. We will both certainly enjoy our rest this weekend !!
Pretty sure this car is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. But he’s definitely easy to spot pulling up in front of the apartment! And I also think that Nichol already knows the car! The lady at the daycare told me that it’s the only car like it in Phnom Penh. Not a total surprise😂
