The News Part Uno

And now, our bear is crawling out of hibernation to deliver a few exciting blog entries (hopefully). It’s been awhile (insert two-tone “so-rry”) so there’s quite a bit of news! Stay tuned for the exciting second installment.

The News:
After finishing my course in February, I went back to supply teaching secondary school and hamster-wheeling the job search. Supply teaching is interesting, you know, never a dull moment. Some days a kid will threaten to kill you, and other days you’ll overhear a kid who cried in your class because he got in trouble tell his buddy that you were the best teacher he ever had. Most of the time you come home feeling completely wrung out from riot-control that day, and it doesn’t take long for the cheeky comments and flying projectiles to get to you if you’re not careful, but every once in awhile a kid would come up to me after school and try to repeat the Japanese phrases I taught him just for fun and make me feel like, “Oh, maybe I am supposed to be a teacher!”

Anyhow, I’ve been trying to get out of supply teaching.

The job search hasn’t really been a hamster-wheel in the traditional sense, actually. It’s that I’ve been looking and I just couldn’t find anything I even wanted to apply for…for months and months. The hamster got a little lost there for a while. Then, at the beginning of February, Ian and I ran away down to Burton-on-Trent to see James for a few days and when we got back, I found a job that I did want to apply for, but didn’t really expect to get. The application was due the next day, so I made use of the valuable life skills I learned in school and stayed up to get the application together in a few hours.

To make a long story somewhat medium-lengthed, I got the job! Now I’m teaching English to refugees and asylum seekers at one of the local colleges, and so far no one has thrown anything at me or made so much as a hint of a death threat! It’s been a bit of a culture shock, to be honest. I’ve started volunteer-teaching a refugee in her home once a week, too, and that has been an amazing experience. At the moment, I’m a pretty happy Kristy with the way things have worked out!

Whohoo,
Kristy