A Work In Progress!

I am finding that I have to download the pictures first or I can't download any of them. That is why this blog is plain!!!

The battle of the bulge is still continuing and I am happy to say that I think I am winning it. It seems fruitless at the best of times, sweating and watching your diet, but suffice to say that I am doing it for my health in the future. I am just carrying too much weight around and it was time to lighten the load, as they say!

It has now been just about 15 days since I got seriously back to the gym and eating somewhat healthy. I have only missed 2 days in that whole time and that was due to the England games and another couple of games that I had to watch.

The last two weeks have been awesome, but somewhat of a blur due to the amount of time spent either watching the World Cup or going to the gym or working.

Next week is going to be even harder as my school for the third time now, have no teacher to cover another teacher while on a week's vacation. It is starting to get on my nerves to tell you the truth.

This week is essay week also. That means that every class has to hand in an essay and it has to be marked by the end of next week. That translates into about 80 or so essays for me to mark as well as every Monday I have one class that gives me a 300 word essay to mark as they are a 'special' class. Tie that together with already having no breaks on Tues or Thur, sorry 5mins between classes and 5 hours of non stop teaching, what you got? You got work overload.

So what if I only teach 2 classes on a Friday. The time that I have off on the Friday is spent either marking the essays or getting the other stuff ready for my other classes and marking the daily quizzes for around 60 kids!

Now that Rebecca is on holiday this week, I lose my two breaks, one on Monday and one on Thursday. That means that I have 4 classes with no breaks everyday now until Friday. When am I going to get time to mark essays? I guess at home, is where. I don't mind being busy, but this is overkill and it is seriously making me think twice about staying here at the end of my contract, but we shall see.

The classes are so serious and at the start, I kind of liked that, but now it is getting to the point that it feels like we are running a high academic academy with no fun for the kids. I have barely time to finish the material in all my daily classes, even going at 100 mile an hour. I feel bad for the kids and just wish we could have some role playing or other 'down time' exercises to do.

I am just a little jaded at the moment cos they did this with 3 months notice when Scott went on holiday and almost a year's notice when James finished his contract. Then add that to the fact that Tony and I are stuck with most of the classes to cover anyone that goes on holiday at our schook, it sucks...... haha.

I am enjoying teaching still, but find Avalon is a little too serious and are very reactive, not proactive. I also just found out that the maximum they will give you at the end of your contract if you want to re-sign is 2 weeks!!

Well, I won't be re-signing that is for sure. By the time I end this contract, it will have been over 26 months since I saw my Mum and Dad and Sister. I want time to be able to just relax and spend some time with them. That is not gonna happen with 2 weeks vacation, plus I want to go to England for a week or so and maybe visit Amsterdam too!

Oh well, there are tons of jobs around here and I will start looking about 2 months before my contract is up. No worries there!

Ran for one hour straight today! I was so proud of myself and I felt much better running. I felt more energetic and definitely lighter. I have lost about a good 5 pounds in two weeks and I am aiming for 2 pounds a week for the first two months or so. Let's see if I can do it.

Bought a new USB high speed plug-in port today for my mouse and cd external burner. The mouse is faster now. The USB ports on the laptop were only low speed, so these two new connections are now high speed. I can notice the difference, so it was worth the 30 dollars.

In the next few weeks, I am going to buy an external 250G hard-drive for around 120 dollars. I can hold all my songs and videos and other big stuff on that and lighten up the hard-drive on the laptop.

Everything is almost back to normal now with the laptop. I have downloaded all the stuff that I lost and I feel 'dressed' again. Just have to download some songs now. I just figured out today that any cds that are mp3s, I can play them on my dvd player, through the tv. Pretty cool eh?