Me, at the moment

This is me, at the moment:

I am sitting, cross-legged, on my bed.

 

I am surrounded by:

-        discarded but on-call layers of clothing to deal with the vast temperature variations in my room (the coldest in the house)

-        Sharpies, colored pencils, erasers, scissors, blank paper, and other seemingly innocuous art/craft supplies

-        A guide to lesson planning, written by current and past PCV’s

-        Little pieces of fake money that I made to correspond to my 5^th form numerals lesson tomorrow

-        Hand-drawn flash cards that include vocabulary such as “monkey,” “arm,” and “window.”

-        Copies of the less-than-ideal 5^th, 6^th, and 9^th form Azerbaijani English books, to plan the lessons I am teaching this week, accompanied by the English schedule for my school (which makes absolutely no logical sense to me, but appears to work)

-        A cup of tea (always)

 

I am mentally running through the lessons I will teach this week, and the successes/failures of those I taught yesterday and today. It has been, strangely enough, more successful than I anticipated.

 

I have a band-aid on my finger (also a vocabulary word, as it happens) from where I sliced it open cutting bread. Typical.

 

I am nervous about tomorrow’s placement interview, in which I’ll express my preferences for a permanent site. Based on this interview, my experience, and my work during PST, my TEFL program managers will select the town and school where I’ll be living and working for the next two years.  I will find out where this is in three weeks (gah!)

 

I am fending off my 9-year-old host sister, who, although she is a fantastic kid, has a habit of picking up EVERYTHING in my room and asking “bu nedir?” (“what’s this?).

 

I am tired, but trying to summon the energy for a quick yoga session before bed, which helps me sleep and stay sane.