The Long and Winding Road to Hell, and Valentines Day

Feb 9-13.

I've noticed, as I'm sure you, my loyal readers have, a decline in the frequency of my writing. Rest assured that we're doing everything we can to make sure arushdy.blogspot.com maintains it's quality, regularity, and prestige.

Report Cards.

I promised to write once the report cards were dealt with, and basically I am, but MAN these are a pain. I had 106 students, each needed a personalized comment (the school checks to make sure), and have the correct marks and information in the system. Now, I like the place I work at because of their organization, however, the sword of organization is, like so many other swords, double-edged. They have a team of guys who's sole job is to be a grammarian, and grammar-check everything that goes public from the school, including my report cards. They want to present a certain image, so they ensure that the English on the report cards going home is completely correct. For example, I commented that a student should watch more t.v. in English. Notice my "t" and "v" are small, they need to be capitalized, so I had to reprint some cards. All the mistakes were fair, however, there was one which I battled with the Grammar King over, and won. He insisted that my sentence which used a "however", could not (as in the previous sentence) be surrounded by commas, and should instead have a semi-colon before the "however". Something like this ";however,". Are you bored and confused yet? Yeah, I told him he was correct, however, I could use "however" however I wanted. A small, meaningless victory.

The Report cards were a struggle, but now that I know how their system works, I think the finals'll go much easier. The report cards occupied my time and energy from Monday to Wednesday. Wednesday night we were invited to a local Baha'i's house for dinner. Cool guy named Nassir. Had some great, great foods, and I managed to have an impromptu meeting with Ryan Duly, the blog's Quality Control Officer. He appreciated "interlashional man of mystery" from the unofficial Baattambang Conference Report, and we joked about how we didn't need to talk about what I've been doing, because he reads more about my life than I do. We also joked about the awkward existential twist that would occur(is now occurring) when he reads about what I write about how we talked about what I wrote about my life. From there, the conversation could only get clearer and more interesting. It did.

One point of interest, which I'm not sure I mentioned is the book "The Road Less Travelled: The New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth" By M. Scott Peck. I'd read bits and pieces,and heard my dad comment on several themes and ideas, but I read it while I was sick last week. Brilliant work. I think the guy hits so many psychological nails on so many minds, that he could be a psycharpentrist (too much? it felt like too much, but I wrote it anyway). He writes about discipline and love, and says great things about them - things that are really helping me motivate myself to hustle.

Thursday night we had a nice "fireside" with some of my friends from work. My dad gave them some small presentations ("anna's presentation") on the Baha'i Faith, and we ate sandwiches and pastries, and the tastiest dragonfruits I've ever had. Unfortunately, we were all teachers at AII, and needed to go do some slave marking work for our students the next day. Two of the guys who came were these cool Nigerian guys who are both named "Emmanuel". Yeah. They met here. I was trying to imagine what that would be like(/how hilarious it would be be), but the bitter, cynical side of my mind is refusing to let me believe it was anything but mundane with a hint of surprise. Ah, how education can sometimes ruin fun.

Today was actually a fun teaching day; I taught all my students about valentines day, bought them candies, taught them a song, and teased them about nonexistent romances. Of course, by starting the teasing process, I inadvertently opened myself up to the relentless speculation and prying of nearly 80 girls between 14-23. It was good times, and one of the teachers (a guy named Eddie) came in and taught the kids to sing while I beatboxed. We brought our evening classes together to repeat the magic, and it was tons of fun.

I am, however, tired, and unfortunately, without pictures to upload. I have some on my phone - I'll put them up on the morrow after tutoring. Love y'all.