I love being busy - it helps the mood swings. If I don't have time to think, I can't meltdown! I can honestly say I'm not busy enough. But not being busy gives me time to reflect and blog. It's good to have that as well. Time. Everyone says they don't have enough but I do and I know I'm lucky for it. Today (Thursday) is usually a busy day in the afternoons. I don't have housework because the cleaner comes in the morning. In the afternoon, I have two sessions with my young students at home, then I pick up the kids, get dinner on the way home then go out to teach English while ex minds the kids, then I'm home by 9pm and free again, except for a bit of clearing up after dinner.
Ex came back from his weekend away, firstly depressed and tired then more upbeat and motivated after a really long sleep. I didn't realise he was feeling down, he didn't say anything and just seemed a bit quiet. He's not a publicly emotional guy and doesn't really understand why other people need the rest of the world to know how they are feeling, so it's hard to read him. The break seems to have done him some good though, so I'm glad for that.
The kids' chinese tutor started with them this week. I want son to be able to understand what everyone around him is saying and daughter needs some help with the chinese homework. She seems quite nice and capable of understanding what the children's needs are, so we'll see if she works out. When the kids are settled into a routine with her, I'll get her to teach me some of the chinese words I need to know. Hopefully in time, I'll begin to understand some chinese and even be able to speak a little. I'm very self conscious when I'm speaking another language, which makes it more difficult to learn. Still, I want to try.
My English class starts on Saturday. I'm a little nervous. The theory is that when kids are immersed in language, they pick it up. It worked with my daughter and I'm hoping on a smaller scale that it will work with my English class as everything we do will be in English. I'm going to read, talk, play games, get them to write a little at first (a lot later on) and do grammar and vocab exercises with them. I hope that by exposing them to books, words, sentence structure and the opportunity to use English, that they will 'acquire' it in a more natural manner. Most kids here, by 5 or 6 have been exposed to some English, but they don't get the opportunity to use it, so they just pick up the local community English which is based on a direct Chinese to English translation. Good English it's not. So that's what I'm aiming for. Sounds good when I talk about it, looks good on paper, I have the resources, so I don't know why I'm nervous.
Tomorrow the tutor is coming for another session of Chinese and in the afternoon I'm out at the autistic centre where I'll do some assessments and I want to show the teachers how to do a cooking session. Cooking is great fun with special ed kids, so we'll see how it goes. We're going to make french toast because it's easy and tasty. I'm starting with a very small group of two kids who I know quite well and we'll build on from there. Should be fun. Then it's off for some shopping and preparing for the English class.
Oh yes, I must 'top up' my phone. It's a prepaid thing, so I have to use up the money i put in it whether I want to or not. This time I didn't use it up in time so it expired. I just didn't have time to call home much this week. It's funny, a prepaid phone reminds me of those people who can't really afford a mobile phone (like the indonesian maids here) so they get a prepaid deal and they always run out of money so they can never call you back. If I think about it, it makes me feel like such a loser, but hey, if I want to get a post paid number, I need a RM 1500 deposit. No thanks, I'd rather feel like a loser (and know I am not).
Nighty night!
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