January 2011. As I float on a wave of cheap wine and fizz with New Year hopes, a cold rain and three months of hard work looming ahead drag me down again. Work without break and without Moona, who left again for Pakistan yesterday. He left with a spring in his step, he loves his work and journeys to all those troubled faraway lands. I took him to the bus stop and got home in the rain, with a sore head and such heaviness in the heart that making pizza and sandwiches for dinner was too much. Nikita made them. I stared into space, then stared into the computer, then stared into space again, thoughts and images on screens swirled into a tight fog, impenetrable, a drug of sorts. In the oven, the pizza burned.
Here I am, midway through the first week of work, unable to settle and already exhausted. Why are the first days the hardest (at least I hope they are, it would imply that things will get better, right?)... The English language room is occupied by a group whose classroom is being repaired, I'm displaced. I go from classroom to classroom, I hang out in the teachers' lounge, shivering. Between classes, I listen to other people's conversations, canteen orders, pupils' emergencies (a boy fell and split his head open yesterday, later appeared with four stitches, a vast bruise where his left cheek used to be, a proud smile)... Today the janitor discovered The Radio, so I find myself also listening to national gossip and popular music. He goes somewhere, I turn it off. Phew.
Short respite. The blaring music, it turns out, was scrambling the very thoughts that squeezed and crushed me yesterday. They're flooding back now, a heavy march of things to do, relentless: house building, plumbing, electrics, stone work, pointing, finish roof, doors and windows, window sills, plaster, floors, jobs for the Romanians, alambique, new lime pit, garden, trees.
Small breath.
Nikita school, planning, daily schedules, add literature, add writing programme, review current affairs. Music, history, art. Practical projects, electronics, film-making, green roof for his hut. Clear the yurt and camp area. Read LOTS of books.
Another breath.
Kira school, work on reading (Portuguese AND English=, maths practice, lots of it, make a schedule for the Nintendo (i.e. reduce!), send her to bed earlier, give her some house work chores, start piano lessons, art projects, get her to start a diary while Moona's away, maybe also a small garden patch in Troporiz?
Small break. The janitor is back. He's got to do some photocopies for the fourth year. It's the lyrics of a song, he looks at it and starts singing, gets the two girls who brought the page to sing the next verse, at the end goes 'Hmmmph, that's NOT CORRECT', sings again. Doesn't seem to notice the radio's off.
There's more, I know. I have all my own stuff to put on list. House work, teaching work, trying to get a life; this latter point, it includes all the New Year's resolutions and seems to stay on the extra-curricular side of life. Filling the gas bottle takes precedence.
Drrrrrnng. My class is about to start. Teaching the big numbers to the fourth year groups. Everyone wants to know how to say A Million. Then they say: 'Oh I wish I had A Million Euros...'. They're 9 years old and they want a mountain of money.
Thus I teach the big numbers and hope for a small number as I count down to Friday.
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