A Really Tough Week

I literally leave for London in just over 6 hours. This will be my first visit to an English speaking country since leaving the USA on the first day of October. Dont get me wrong, I speak a lot of English every day (more than I would like, in fact) but I am curious as to whether it will be strange for me to walk into a store or public space and hear fluent English everywhere.

As per the title of this post, I have had a really tough week. After a fun weekend in Cinque Terre I had a lot on my plate including work, tutoring, hosting a guest, preparing for my spring break holiday and moving out of my apartment. Altogether these things made me pretty crabby and sensitive to just about every little upset. I dont think I have been sleeping well either. Moving by itself required purging half my stuff, packing and making two trips to Sophia Antipolis by bus to haul everything there. Needless to say I will be purging some more before I pack for my flight to the USA. Anyway, I managed to get moved out of the apartment and now all of my belongings are locked up at the lycée until I get back from the holidays.

I think the thing that really tipped me over the edge this week was work. Tuesday I showed up for my first lesson only to have it cancelled last minute, so I waited around for my second lesson which I taught. My third lesson was also cancelled without warning and my fourth lesson was cut short after 20 minutes. I spent 2 hours total on the bus and 8 hours on campus to teach for less than 2 hours. Thursday my morning lesson was cancelled without warning so I took the bus home to pack. When I returned in the afternoon my first lesson had to be cancelled because the professor was absent (no call, no email, no note for me) so I couldnt teach the students because I am uninsured without supervision. My final lesson was volunteer tutoring and nobody showed up. On Thursday I spent a total of 4 hours on the bus and about 3 hours on campus but taught zero hours in lessons.

Ridiculous? I think so. As a result I wrote a note to the absent professor that I wont be teaching her class ever again (Since I am only working one more week after the holidays, in reality I am only skipping out on one lesson, but it gets the point across) because she didnt have the decency to call me. The rest of the teachers more or less had good reasons, but I am having a really hard time not feeling completely useless around here. Maybe I should have just planned to quit my job now, ship my bags home and backpack for a whole month? I could have done another week at Taizé or extended my upcoming trip to include Prague like I originally had planned to. This is all unneccessary speculation, but my mind naturally wanders to other/better options when I realize that my actual situation is not the best use of my time.

Alas, this is all nearly in the past. I will teach one lesson at 17:00, then take the bus to the airport and my vacation can begin! London plans include tea at Harrod's, the Tate, the Natural History Museum, some market shopping and an Easter Sunday Service.