New day

I wanted to say thanks to my friends who wrote, concerned that the job situation here was turning sour. It's nearing the 6 month mark, which is when culture shock/boredom starts to make my eyes wander to new countries but the I'm happy to report that things have gotten a lot better in the last two weeks and I'm not planning on going anywhere.

With the "new" teacher leaving after only a day of work, we were left severely short staffed and all of us were given new schedules. I was given the schedule I asked for in the first place, 10 - 6 working with the kindergarten kids. So far I love it. Working with those kids can hardly even be called work. We sing and color and play the whole time. And it's balanced by my afternoon classes with the elementary school kids, where I do actual teaching. The best part: all but one of my high school classes were canceled or given to other teachers. I teach at least 8 classes, sometimes 9 or 10, a day and I have three classes a week that are overtime so I'm earning a bit of extra cash.

Our director has also made a few concessions. She signed a contract addendum that we wanted, clarifiying how much we pay for utilities and finalizing our end dates. It was nothing major but it was nice to be given what we asked for. Also, we've been accomodated on a few tweaks we wanted made to our schedules and classes. In the coolest move though, the director gave us June 4th off. June 5th is a national holliday so that means we get a 4 day weekend. Adam, Michelle and I are planning a trip to Thailand and I think Sarah is going to come along as well. Flights a super cheap and we think we can get away with under $500 for the entire weekend. It's nice to see that overtime money go somewhere cool.

Ok, I gotta run. It's that first beautiful day we've had all week and we're having a BBQ at our "rival" school across the street, followed by a baseball game (the Giants are on a 17 game losing streak...) and then a trip to the college area to drink some more. Talk to you later.