Picnic Basket

What is nice about my office environment is that once it hits about 430-ish or 5-ish, when only half or less than half the teachers are left, there’d inevitably be someone walking around, offering sweets/chocolates/cookies/tea/anything - just to perk their fellow colleagues up, whether they know them or not. I should start doing that for others too After watching 10 groups do their oral presentation today, I think I deserve a pretty Paisley and Cream cupcake! But nuh-uh, I am going home to my kopitiam dinner. Too knackered to cook!

Was spent on a nice quiet (to us, at least) dinner with Justin (who had just returned from Sakura-land), board games and laughter with Boon and Andrea and new friend Diana, and basically lots of mucking around in our little flat, as I caught up (guiltily) with my HK TV series and attempted to mark more GP essays.

Which, by the way, is rather painful. That would be an understatement. And I thought marking Sec 3 essays was bad. That was until I received my scripts and found scribbly scrawlies in the form of an average of 5 pages x *undisclosed number*

Remember how your English teacher used to tell you that you’d need to have tidy handwriting cos untidy handwriting generally pisses the examiner off and you’d get lower ‘impression marks’? I will tell you now that THAT is not far from the truth. I am a nice BT (beginning teacher) and what I do is that I take a deep breath, sip a little more tea, sit up a little more, and re-read what you have attempted to present to me, whether you are trying to convince me that Hilter[sic] and Gadhi [sic] were great leaders or that Singaporeans lived in kampongs ‘long before the 18th century’.

Can be done, sze. You have at least another 4 years to go.  

But no lah, it’s not that bad. Really.

One week that was spent on invigilation (and trying not to fall asleep - I think my body system shuts down if I am inactive for a certain amount of time) - marking - getting to know my new colleagues - attending more induction courses - canteen breaks - filling up my workstation with papers - attending meetings - being awed at the number of emails and e-bulletin messages a lowly JC tutor receives in a morning.

And I have not even begun teaching. 

I begin teaching proper on Tuesday.

How do I introduce myself to 26 seventeen-year-olds without sounding/looking/BEING dorky and uncool? 

In other exciting news - I have been assigned to be a CCA teacher of Music and Dance  

I am also looking forward to Wednesday and Thursday, which has been set aside for the college’s sabbaticals - which basically translates to the two days where the kids will attend various courses of their fancy-of-the-moment, be it Spanish or hip hop or horseriding or kayaking.

And I am chaperoning 59 teenagers to a paintball session.

This is going to get messy - but I am looking forward to it! 

Today’s induction programme left me with just that one word: overwhelmed.

And what happened after that was a little daunting too. - should have said no ay? -

My dad said that I am ‘lucky’ - that all I WANT - I’d eventually get it despite the many obstacles.

I’d like to think of it as God shaping my path for me as I follow His will (or what I think of as His will) in my chosen career.

The road ahead is not going to be easy, but I know that God is at my back always. School, uni, NIE - all these have come to an end - an end to a new beginning that began today.

It was Jer’s 23rd birthday+very late housewarming+Karmel’s 1st birthday last night - just an excuse for a hall friends gathering I haven’t seen the D3 girls for quite a while (damned work!) and it was really good just hanging out with the girls (and the guys) and being plain silly once in a while. And we didn’t mean to be camwhores. We aren’t usually camwhores. But as Jer has recorded, we took a whopping 203 pictures last night. All in the name of fun And I wish I didn’t have to do my work. I keep mentally reminding myself - just 2 more months to the end of this semester (and no more sucky Ed Psych tutor!)! And I will clean up this space after I am done with my Lit essay tonight