I have bread!

So I'm walking home at 7:30 pm, a bit too tired to be hungry, but knowing my stomach will begin battling me once my 500 mL of water finishes sloshing around inside of it (don't you just love the mental imagery?). So I begin to think about what to eat for supper, and if I should buy something or find something at home...

The latter option worries me slightly for I cannot remember what I have in my fridge. But I do not feel like buying food from the vendor in the night market that I always go to, for I am a bit tired of the same kind of rice after 2.5 months, and need a bit of variety.

I'm afraid to go to 7-11 for my favorite corn patties (less than a dollar) because I distinctly remember someone saying recently that probably nothing you buy at 7-11 is good for you. So I scratch that idea and continue to head home in the rain, dodging cars as I cross each intersection. Did I mention two of my colleagues have been hit by vehicles during their stay here? Consequently I am very wary when I cross any road, and I look all around me like those decorations you see in cars with bobbing heads that turn in all directions when the car is moving.

Thankfully I am still alive and have not been hit, but I am told it may be only a matter of time... but on to other, lighter topics.

So I come across my favorite grocery store which has everything from toilet paper to gum, as well my favorite vegetable - canned corn. After picking up some items, half of them chocolate snacks to fortify me on my way home, I find my soggy umbrella, thankful it is still raining and I can't walk off without my umbrella like I am prone to do (leave things behind).

The store is my favorite because it is right by my house and I can buy almost everything there that I need for daily life, like the previously mentioned toilet paper and chocolate. The second reason it's my favorite store is because I don't have to walk 2 miles to bring my groceries home.

 I am still not sure what to eat and I am racking my brains trying to think. I bought what looks like already-made egg salad, and I only wish I had bread to eat it with. I desperately try to think of what's left in the fridge and all I can see in my mind is the loaf of .... very .... old bread I still haven't thrown out because I am never home when the compost truck comes around. The egg salad comes in sealed plastic - not a jar and not a plastic box - it comes in a thick sealed plastic bag, and you squeeze it out like toothpaste. It conveniently has pictures of ways you can eat it, which is why I bought it in the first place - the tantalising pictures got my attention. One picture shows the salad on a piece of bread, another picture shows the salad on a lettuce leaf with a decoration on top... Unfortunately, I don't even have a lettuce leaf to eat my salad on... I am definitely feeling sorry for myself. If only I had bread...

I carefully run through my options: run back to 7-11 and buy bread that probably has less nutrients in it than a piece of my bedspread, run forward and look for a bakery that sells bread with a few more nutrients, hopefully, but that is at least 10 minutes walk one-way, or, my last option, go home and eat my salad solo. I decide to go home. I still cannot think of anything, not even a cucumber, to put my egg salad on. But I am hungry enough to eat my salad a cappella, or without accompaniment. I may even make some rice and try the two together... or I'll just eat my salad by itself and skip the rice idea...

So I get home and carefully open my chocolate snacks to try them (for some energy). They're not bad. Usually the chocolate here is quite different and that's really the only way I know to describe it right now.

Then I head to the fridge and peer inside... and lo and behold!!!!!!!! I HAVE BREAD!!!!! there is one seedy loaf sitting on the top shelf looking back at me in silence as I begin to sing gleefully that I have bread. It's raisin bread with poppy seeds, but the mayonnaise here is sweet anyway, and right now raisin bread really is better than nothing.

And on the second shelf I spy a small clear tupperware bowl with some mixture inside - I HAVE MACARONI and sauce!!! (or pasta, for those who do not use the word macaroni). I have food I knew nothing about, and I'm so happy. No need to wait for rice to cook, no need to fry eggs or eat my carefully hoarded cereal (I have to walk very far to get that cereal!). I have supper! So I sing some more.

Because I can't bring myself to mix raisins and egg salad, I pick out the raisins first and then spread my bread. Then I dash into my room to begin blogging about my experience. No need to dwell on the fact that today I almost decided teaching was quite fun, until my last class, choir, when for the first time, I really became upset at the students and they knew it and I felt bad they saw it.

I am thankful I didn't shout, not that I would know how to, (do NOT laugh or you just may hear me practicing my shouting in your direction), but I usually am able to stay calm even when I have someone challenging me and loudly demanding me to explain why I asked the class to do such a stupid assignment. 

But somehow, with the choir singing twice in the next three days, one of those times being for parents and families, and with this being our last practice before our first performance, and with it being Wednesday, and my last and most rowdy, and often least focused class, I guess I just reached one of those breaking points where suddenly you feel a great injustice is happening to you and you have to strike out against it as quickly as you can before it hurts you anymore. Did anyone ever say teaching high school was a breeze? Well, perhaps they were refering to the typhoon season, for 'breeze' in my opinion only refers to way attention spans fly.

But, it's over and tomorrow is another day, and I have several more ideas of how to teach and thankfully, several more chances to try them out. And I have bread!!! I'm so happy!!

just a quick note on the random pictures - one is the pile of grading I had accumulating in my office around midterms - wouldn't you like to be a teacher? (angelic smile). The other, the one with the wide-eyed, glazed over stare, is a teacher in the midst of grading the pile larger than a pyramid.

That's all.

Until next time,

- R