Grammar School First Day

I'm still unemployed. Monday I started a job at a local school, but they informed me at the end of the day that I need not return on Tuesday, because they had a permanent replacement coming in. That was disappointing. But the good news is that I worked in a grammar school office for a day, so naturally I have a couple funny stories to relate.

At the last minute, this school's secretary had to leave, so Friday at 4:30 my temp agency called to ask if I wanted the job, which would begin Monday at 7:30am. I was, of course, thrilled to have employment. So at about 7:25am Monday I pulled into the school's parking lot and met the principal on the way in. We talked in her office for about 15 minutes, during which time she explained to me that she would be holding a staff meeting at 8am to inform the faculty and staff of the former secretary's departure, and to tell them that I would be at the desk. I listened, slightly stunned, as she informed me that I would be the only person in the office until 8:30 and then again from 1-4. And then off she went, leaving me with no training to man the school office on a Monday morning. If you're thinking my training left a bit to be desired, we are in agreement.

So, about 20 minutes into my new position, kids started coming in to get tardy slips. The first girl just gave me her name and trusted me to take care of it later. The second kid came in right after her, though, and I decided it was time to figure out the system. I am recreating the general flow of our interaction, for your entertainment:

[6th or 7th grade kid enters the office]

Kid: I need a tardy slip, please
Confused and bewildered new temp secretary, aka Leslie: Ok, what do the tardy slips look like?
Kid: They're white, uh, it's in a book and there are two pieces, and you keep one and give the other one to me.
Leslie: [ok, a book of duplicates...] Hmm, let's see...d'ya wanna come around the desk and help me look?
[kid obligingly walks around the counter and together we dig through the piles of crap left on the desk. Eventually we come upon the tardy slip book. I inwardly give a sigh of relief]
Leslie: Ok, how much of this information do I actually need to write in?
Kid: Uh, just my name and grade....
Leslie: So what's your name?
Kid: Brian [note: I don't remember his name; but we could pretend that I changed it to protect him if we wanted to...]
Leslie: (pause) and your last name?
Kid: Oh, Smith. I'm in 6th grade
Leslie: Ok, Brian...so how do I know if you're excused or unexcused?
Brian: I'm excused.
Leslie: REally? Well, that's lucky for you, isn't it? How do I know that's right?
Brian: Tardy slips are always excused. I just give it to my teacher, and she records it in her book.
Leslie: (not really following the excused/unexcused logic) Uh-huh... Ok, here you go.


After my first hour of being the secretary, most of the kids were in their respective classes rather than training me on how to be the secretary, so things got a bit quieter for a while. I worked on some busy-work projects, and with a happy spirit, pleased to be getting paid for it. During my day I managed to impress my coworker (the secretary who comes from 8:30-1, but didn't actually show up until after 9am that day, and then I found out that she'd only been working there for 3 weeks) with my vast knowledge and unsurpassed experience on such illustrious office machines as the copier (fifty copies, two sided, stapled, printed on green paper, check!), the folding machine (the BEST folding machine I've ever had the pleasure of using), and the postage meter (seriously, a monkey could run one of those machines). All in all, it wasn't a bad first day. Until they fired me at the end. Well, not exactly fired. But it felt a little like being fired. My temp agency rep seemed a bit perturbed at the abrupt nature of the job-end. She assured me that she asked the guy from the school several times if I wasn't doing what they needed or something, but they said I was fine but they wanted to get the permanent replacement in asap.

Whatever. I guess one day of employment is better than none. We can just hope that I won't have to suffer through too many more first/last days between now and June. At last they make for good blog fodder...

Ecuador, Harry, and the Chair

On Monday morning I got an email from Dr. Wells, principal of Alliance Academy International in Quito, Ecuador. Dr. Wells was writing to offer me a position in the ESL department at the school and I am quite excited to accept this offer. Should you like more information about the school, you can check it out at http://www.alliance.k12.ec/ . I noticed when I was last on the site that they're serving chicken fingers for lunch tomorrow. So that's good news. :)

The other day I woke up in the middle of the night, and as I was lying there in my warm little bed, snuggled under my new comforter, I couldn't stop smiling as I thought about going to Ecuador.

If all goes as planned, I will move there early in August, and classes begin at the end of August. I'll use the extra time to find an apartment, get settled in, and adjust to the altitude in the city- over 9,000 feet above sea level! (compare that to Denver, the Mile High City, which is about 5,280 feet) So that should be interesting.

After I got the email I went to the library to get some books on Ecuador. It's always good to know a little something about the countries you visit. So I'm learning all about the country's history and geography. I was relieved to read that the part of the country where I will be is not close to the Amazon river basin, where all the large, poisonous snakes reside. That was great news. Also encouraging is the fact that Quito is small (2 million; compared to the Chicagoland area, over 9 million) and beautiful (it's in the middle of the mountains). Because it's only 15 miles from the equator, the sun rises at 6am and sets at 6pm, year-round. The temperature is also really mild and steady- average high of 77 degrees and average low of 43 degrees all year. So, feel free to come visit. I'll be your tour guide!

Since I haven't gotten a temp job yet, Ecuador has been a main focus in my life right now. I did fail to mention that I finished re-caning my rocking chair and my dad fixed the rockers for me while I was at home, so now I have a nice wooden rocking chair, courtesy of someone in Wheaton who put it on the curb for the garbage men! Here's a picture of the little beauty. (Don't look too closely if you know caning; it's not that good of a job. I can tell from my mom caning chairs my whole childhood, but unfortunately I never paid close enough attention to know what I was doing wrong when I finally tried it myself. Alas!)

The old Chicago weather made a valiant effort to turn winter again today. After weeks of mild temperatures, we got some light snow this afternoon and the temps are supposed to drop tonight and be in the single digits all weekend. Still a pretty wimpy winter for this area, though.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Harry. My friend Kristy and I have been watching through all the Harry Potter movies this past week. She's working part time and I'm not working and we both graduated in December, so we decided it would be a great time to burn some time. :) I've enjoyed it immensely. All we have left is the newest movie. That one has to be rented (Kristy and her sister owned all the others) so we're planning to do that soon.

It occurs to me that I write two types of posts on this blog; the update type, and the random thoughts kind. I like the latter better. That's all.

Holiday Recap

I keep putting off this blog because it seems that it's become too big to handle. So I'm just going to write about what I want to. Feel free to ask me about whatever I skip.

I've been back in the Windy suburbs for a few days now, and hope to finish unpacking today. Thanks to the combination of Christmas gifts and the fallout from ruthlessly weeding through my storage items during break, that which I moved back to Wheaton was considerably more substantial than that which I moved to Ohio.

Among my noteworthy Christmas gifts, I got a down comforter from my dad and stepmom which makes me feel warm and cozy, just from thinking of it! Here's a shot of me enjoying said comforter with Alfred, the best teddy bear in the whole wide world. The comforter is mucho warm and cozy. Yesterday I ordered a cover, to protect it from drool (ahem) I mean the dirt of normal wear-and-tear. The cover is my first EBAY purchase, so I'm excited to see how that works out. And for the record, it's quite ridiculous of Kohl's to sell twin size comforters but not the covers for them.

One of my favorite things about this holiday was that I got to spend a lot of time with family- much more than usual. I got to have several good visits with my two adorable nieces, and even one overnight visit which was a lot of fun for all three of us. Here's a picture of them at our Christmas celebration at Dad and Sue's house. I picked this picture because I think Devan's expression is particularly cute. :) This is typical of the two girls; Dalen will do something (sit in the chair) and Devan will decide Hey! That's Exactly what I want to do right now, too! :) It's too funny.


I also got a hearty dose of friend time during my weeks in Ohio and Indiana. I was blessed to meet little Kensley, daughter of my friend, Jessica while I was home. She was less than two weeks old when I got to hold her. I LOVE holding new babies! They're so tiny and light and they make funny noises with their mouths when they sleep. Plus, when they start to funny funky or cry, you can just hand them back to their moms or dads. :) On the way home I stopped in Winona Lake to visit a couple of friends from undergrad, Jessica and Liz. Liz's two little girls helped us occupy our time. This is her oldest, sitting in a pot which, until right before this picture was taken, held toys, not toddlers. I told Liz Anne Geddes doesn't have anything on us! It's always good to see old friends. I regret that I can't see them more often. Sometimes I think what a joy it must be to have all the people that matter to you in one place. I'm not sure I can even imagine that anymore! But I suppose that's the price I pay to live overseas and away from home.

And speaking of living overseas, things are progressing with my application to teach ESL at Alliance Academy in Quito Ecuador. I had a really enjoyable phone interview with the director of the ESL department yesterday, which left me a little giddy for a few hours. I'd been trying to wait patiently since before Christmas break to hear back, and it was such a joy and relief to hear from them. Plus the woman was really easy to talk to and was encouraging to me in her description of the school's ESL needs. I felt like each of the positions she mentioned would be within my abilities. She told me at the end of our chat that I should hear back from them soon. I don't really know what "soon" means, but I'll definitely keep you all posted when I know more!

In less monumental news, I re-joined Curves for Woman this morning (that's an exercise place that I was a part of before I left for China) I'm really excited to be back at it and working out regularly. That hasn't been part of my life since my back started acting up in October of 2006. I never thought I'd be excited about paying money to work out! Ah, life is surprising sometimes!

I hope your new years are off to a good start.

From Siberia With Love

I've been in Ohio for the holidays for nearly three weeks now. It's been fantastic. Lots of visiting with family, lots of fun with friends, lots of eating yummy food that's making me gain weight like nobody's business...but that's another blog. Anyway, now that all the festivities are over, I'm finding myself with more free time on my hands than I've had for many moons. And free, quiet time, at that.

Today I've been thinking about perspective. About how my feelings undulate so quickly on something; it's good, it's bad, it's scary, it's familiar, it's comforting, it's boring, it's dangerous, it's exciting. As if I am standing inside a sphere, and where I am standing doesn't change, and what I'm looking at outside the sphere doesn't change either, but the sphere moves, throwing new and different colors and textures on the thing I'm looking for. Nothing changes but my view of the thing, and yet that makes all the difference.

Today in boredom I turned on the tv. I watched "Siberian Adoption Story" and almost turned it off when they started interviewing the prospective adoptive parents. I'm sure it must be difficult to have that sort of emotional experience video-taped, but they made me cringe.

The adoption story followed two American families as they went through the process of adopting Russian baby girls. One couple was from Florida, and they were striking in their resemblance to Barbie and Ken. Blond and tan, they were beautiful people. The woman annoyed me from about the third second of the recording. She was sharp and pushy to the Russian translators and officials; basically, she was the opposite of a respectful international visitor.

The couple had two children of their own (boys, ages 4 and 6) and decided to adopt after four miscarriages in a row. The woman wanted a girl. She talked about how they considered using their own egg and sperm in various procedures, but that was going to cost about twice what an adoption would. The woman said, "I just kept thinking, is it worth all that money for the baby to have blond hair?" and I thought, "Please be kidding" but no smile followed what I thought MUST be a punch line in poor taste. She was serious. Her deep tan, bleach-blond hair and heavy makeup weren't an act. This woman was all about appearance.

She hired a doctor to look at photos of the baby to try to determine whether she had fetal alcohol syndrome. When she and her husband saw the child for the first time she said, "I think if she were out in the sun, she would have blond hair." On the airplane with other prospective parents, she said in amazement, "Those babies look like Americans! They're beautiful babies. You can't adopt an American baby from America!" Needless to say, the woman didn't mean the babies looked like Americans; she meant they looked like Caucasians.

After the doctor emailed to say she didn't think the baby had FAS, settling this couple's mind on adopting (because we certainly wouldn't want to help a needy child; just one that is healthy and looks like us), they returned to the orphanage with an Armani baby outfit and (I pause, close my eyes and shake my head here, at the sheer ridiculousness of this one) an electric baby wipe warmer.

SIDENOTE: you can't even use that thing in Russia! The outlets are different! And even if you could, the baby doesn't need our electronic gadgets! She doesn't need AMERICA to swoop in and wrap her up in money and designer onesies and SunIn Hair Lightener; this baby, just like every other baby in every country, needs love. She needs acceptance and security and a warm, full belly.

I was saddened by the constant refrain of my fellow countrymen and women, "She will have a much better life in American than in Siberia." Ah, the arrogance. Yes, living with a loving family beats living in an orphanage, hands down. But living in America is not superior to living in another country, even if that country isn't as technologically or economically or any other-ly advanced as we believe ourselves to be.

I love my country, and I am thankful to have been born here. But I have met people all over the world, in poor countries and rich, who are equally thankful to have been born into their own circumstances, under their own flag. We delude ourselves when we embrace the narrow view that life as we know it is superior to any other sort of life. Delude ourselves and display our ignorance to the rest of the world.