So the official results for grad schools came back in. My batting average was pretty weak (1/10 in total) but that made choosing Northwestern so easy!! Starting next September I’ll be in the Windy City studying creative writing and probably pondering why I made such a terrible life decision. I’m hoping to be able to finish my degree in two years and teach at community colleges after. We’ll see…I don’t know what’s going to happen.
In other writing news I found out I’m going to be published in a magazine. I’ve been sending out tons of entries, because if I want to teach I have to have a good resume and some work published. The magazine is called Open Wide – it’s published in Britain (lame, I know) and they’re going to email me when the issue I’m in comes out. The story is kind of dark and it’s about a dystopian earth. It ends with someone being killed, so don’t expect to be uplifted or to laugh any … unless you think murder is funny, in which case laugh all you want!
In case your one of the three people who reads this and missed it in the last entry, I’m headed to Korea next week to visit some friends and hang out. It should be pretty amazing. I’m really excited to go somewhere and not be hanging out in my apartment all day. Working nights has made me a bit stir crazy.
Example of how lame I’ve become: I try to limit my TV watching when I’m in the apartment for a couple reasons. 1) Day TV is lame anyway and 2) I try to be productive which means with free time I try to read and write as much as I can. The only time I do watch TV is during lunch. For the past two or three weeks I’ve watched the Bonnie Hunt Show. She kind of reminds me of my mom and it’s enjoyable to watch. Anyway, this week they changed time slots – I guess the show has been successful so they have moved up to earlier daytime hours. Monday I sat down and turned on the TV Guide and was literally devastated when I scrolled down; we’re talking Tedd started at the time slot for like 10 minutes trying not to cry. This forced me to watch some daytime soaps (which…are pretty amazing) and Desperate Housewives on Lifetime. I was horrified to find myself engrossed in an episode of Housewives this week… Oh man… Sadness.
As part of the shift to Korea I had to quit my job at the Turkish restaurant. I’m actually planning on returning when I get back form Korea, but my last night working they had a little going away thing for me (and by that I mean my boss bought me a beer and we watched the local news at the bar). Anyway, that night one of the people I have been working with was all fired up. She had told me that she was going to quit for a while, but this day she was all stressed out and said instead of giving her two weeks notice she was just going to quit. I was like, “Yeah! You go girl!” So she asked me what I did when I quit, and I told her about the eloquent speech I prepared for my boss. I have the opening right here:
Uhhh…Boss, I’m going to Korea.
That wouldn’t have worked for her though, so she said she was going to try something else. Anyway, she disappeared and when she came back she was laughing. I asked her how it went and she said that our boss was just like, “Whatever, I already hired people to replace you.” I felt pretty bad about it because I didn’t understand why our boss was so indifferent. Here she was buying me a beer, and she was literally kicking the other girl out. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the girl had been like a stoner who didn’t do anything, but she was a good worker. She complained all the time to me, but I thought that was just like our thing, I didn’t think anyone knew how much she hated it there.
Oh well, the beer was good, so what are you going to do?
Last night was also the last night at my teaching job at the church. I’m really going to miss the crew there. I’m going to miss the crew from my job too, but the English crew was just hilarious, and not merely because they didn’t speak English.
Sue is the head teacher in my class and Bob, Patty and I just kind of chip in and help out. Sue absolutely cracks me up. She has a 17 year old son at home, so she knows that sarcasm is the language of our generation. Last night I was eating dinner and looking over the lesson I was supposed to teach. Sue rolls up and asks how things are going. I tell her fine and then she looks at me studying and is like, “You okay?” I told her I just hadn’t looked over it yet and she gave me this hysterical look. It was like a shrug, but it was literally like she was saying, “Who gives a shit? No one has a clue what you’re saying anyway.”
In one class a few weeks ago, we were going over where each student is from. Everyone was doing their best in English and then we got to Dorilla. She’s this really nice older lady from Peru. She actually understands really well, but speaking isn’t her strong thing. So Sue asked her where she was from. It took a while to process that and then finally she was like, “Soy de Peru.” And Sue was exhausted and was like, “Peru, right, great.” Then under her breath she’s like, “Don’t even worry about speaking English in English class.” I don’t know if any of the other teachers heard her, but I was almost pissing my pants I was laughing so hard.
Last night I was in charge of doing the lesson on clothes. So I went through this whole two pages of vocabulary and described the different kinds of clothes. There was a new girl in our class who is from Brazil. She’s 18…and evidently a rabble rouser. This Chinese girl in our class is usually super sweet, but last night they were yucking it up over me having to describe bra, underpants and boxers. It was literally like I was the clown. I’m hoping they were laughing with me rather than at me, although any kind of laughter is preferable to the stoic silence we usually get when we teach.
So I guess that’s it. This was lame, but it serves as a good representation of my life lately. Happy Easter!
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