Thursday, May 30, 2013

It's been a while...

I've been dealing with the way too many new things at work on top of preparing two presentations without having chilling & reflecting time on my own. For the first time in a while, I had a peaceful afternoon nap on my favorite sofa. I realize how tired my body and soul has been. I guess that's what happens when you suddenly start dealing with more than 100 different types of humans at work. Before this new work, I talked with only my family and some of kids at my own school. The average number of people I meet was about 5 to 6 a day. They are all familiar faces and I know what to expect. But from a few weeks ago, as my new work begun, suddenly I deal with 40 to 50 people a day and I don't know many of them. For the first time in my life, I realized why I  couldn't handle school life so well back in school days. It is just too much information to take in. At workshops and presentations, I meet new faces and share the time but I often feel like those occasions are for meeting kindred spirits and making new friends. After all, those participants who bother to join my workshop or presentations share the interests or at least have a bit of interest in what I say. So, it has been inspirational and empowering for me to do presentations. However, this job as an ALT is a whole different story. Many of participants (students) got little interests in what I say. In fact some of them including teachers show no interests in me, an ALT. For them, I am just an intruder of their fun school life. One day, she marched in from nowhere and started telling something they didn't care. To make the matter worse, she asks them what  she can do for them. What a nightmare for them! I feel sorry for their confusion but I hope they will eventually understand my intention is not bad at all. In fact, I genuinely would like to get to know them because we are there, sharing the time and space at the same time for some kind of funny and amazing coincidence. It might mean nothing if we ignore the fact that the chance to be in the same classroom at a certain time is very low almost like the level of miracle. I just can't help getting a bit too excited about that. It might be a good reason or some kind of universal mystery going right now. If so, I don't want to miss a thing. Having this crazy idea in my mind, I've been 100% open to whatever I feel at work. With all my senses I take everything going on around me and it's been exhausting. I feel so alive and appreciate the opportunities offered to me but still I haven't got used to such an intense circumstance.
On top of that, at Sunnyfield English, I have nearly 10 new students joined to our learning community last month. I'm so ecstatic but at the same time I feel a bit overwhelmed because of the flood of information I would like to take in. Unfortunately, the capacity of my heart is limitless but that of my head is quite limited. Considering the chaos in my mind, however, things have been rather smooth. In fact it has been unexpectedly good. I appreciate everyone's generosity and patience.

From next month, I will have a full schedule, 5 days a week at elementary schools, 3 days a week at  Sunnyfield English in the evening plus my own study and life. I know there are bunch of people who got much busier schedule but please imagine I am a total beginner for juggling. I can toss and catch only a ball at a time. But now I got 5 balls in my hands to juggle. I am a big believer of "Practice makes perfect" and would keep on trying to juggle well. But in a mean time, I need a group of cheer leaders.
Would you be one of them?

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