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Taiwan Teaching Diary #4: Malaise! Ennui!
Aug. 17th, 2022 03:47 pmToday is day four of quarantine, and technically I can leave the hotel for work and errands and such. I kind of want to take a walk to McDonald's down the street, but it's so dang hot, and the prospect of giving up the AC is not appealing. Plus I don't want to accidentally go somewhere wrong or get in trouble and thereby extend quarantine or get a fine. But there is a malaise today of being in the hotel as well as being mostly over jetlag so my brain can now focus on being homesick.
It might be different if I had my own place yet, but I don't. I'm supposed to meet with the housing agent tomorrow evening, and I'm absolutely, totally worried about finding a place. Realistically, if I don't have anything by the time I check out of this place Sunday, I'll just get another hotel until I can find an apartment. I don't relish the idea of hauling all my shit around from place to place, but I won't be out on the streets.
I just feel really unsettled. When I moved to China, my school had a whole system to help us get situated. Of course, no pandemic made that a lot easier. When I moved to Belarus, it was a full month after school started as well as full pandemic, so I never really made many connections there, but I did have my apartment at least. I had a place of my own that I could retreat to.
I will go to campus tomorrow to at least meet people. I'm not allowed to be in the classroom until next week. I did remember something from a class I took two summers ago and put up a padlet for today's online discussion. None of the kids like to chime in while online, nor are they interested in typing in the chat, but I put discussion questions up in advance on the padlet and told the kids they had to respond to at least 3 of the questions. I could save the padlet to check for participation and grade the responses if I wanted to. I was so happy that it actually worked, especially since I remembered at about 7:30 this morning and class started at 8 AM! Go me!
But also sigh. Life has become such a long slog of "just gotta get through this little bit, just gotta get through this little bit, just gotta..."
It might be different if I had my own place yet, but I don't. I'm supposed to meet with the housing agent tomorrow evening, and I'm absolutely, totally worried about finding a place. Realistically, if I don't have anything by the time I check out of this place Sunday, I'll just get another hotel until I can find an apartment. I don't relish the idea of hauling all my shit around from place to place, but I won't be out on the streets.
I just feel really unsettled. When I moved to China, my school had a whole system to help us get situated. Of course, no pandemic made that a lot easier. When I moved to Belarus, it was a full month after school started as well as full pandemic, so I never really made many connections there, but I did have my apartment at least. I had a place of my own that I could retreat to.
I will go to campus tomorrow to at least meet people. I'm not allowed to be in the classroom until next week. I did remember something from a class I took two summers ago and put up a padlet for today's online discussion. None of the kids like to chime in while online, nor are they interested in typing in the chat, but I put discussion questions up in advance on the padlet and told the kids they had to respond to at least 3 of the questions. I could save the padlet to check for participation and grade the responses if I wanted to. I was so happy that it actually worked, especially since I remembered at about 7:30 this morning and class started at 8 AM! Go me!
But also sigh. Life has become such a long slog of "just gotta get through this little bit, just gotta get through this little bit, just gotta..."
