a good day!

...relatively speaking anyway. after last tuesday, any day is a good day really. my 9th graders were their normal rebellious and horribly behaved selves. but, there were no fist fights today. no one picking wood off their chairs or desks and hurling it with as much possible force into another student's face.

these are my accomplishments for today:

-i successfully taught a class with about 50 6th grade students today. this was a result of my counterpart deciding she'd invite her class 'na gosti' that is... as a guest... to mine. luckily, we were working on halloween words, prepositions, sentences, and drawings that i had spent a while prepping last night. in other words, i had a plan and it went extraordinarily well just when i needed it to.

-i got several boys to speak in the aforementioned class when they never speak in mine. excitement abounded as my faith in the "i can do this" stock shot up 3,000 points (exact figures still murky). they spoke mostly in their language, but one correctly unscrambled a sentence about a flying ghost and i about lost my mind because he COULD do it. yay!

-i remembered to eat before my 9th grade class which helped me enormously as things spiraled out of control as per the usual.

-my 7th graders all stayed seated and worked diligently (remarkably so) on a silly word search, racing each other, policing each other's progress and checking for incorrectly circled words just in case i missed any. i was not even offended, but rather ecstatic that they were writhing with so much enthusiasm.

-i am going to try and hold a teachers' english class again today after the one last week ended in disaster and left me fuming. the fact that i feel like trying again is enough to make me happy (ask my mother how ENRAGED i was last week about how heinous the class was) so,hooray for second attempts!

-i got my ballot mailed.

-i figure the weeks cannot get much worse than last week was, so i have good things to look forward to!

-i made delicious squash soup again

-i am embracing the fact that today is my thursday. tomorrow is my last day of teaching this week as i am headed to the capital for a meeting thursday and friday!

-i had a good conversation with another colleague in this language and she did not finish sentences for me, grow impatient or give up as i tried to explain halloween to her.

it is a beautiful, sunny fall day. off to explore!

thanks to all of you for extending positive encouragement, kind words, wonderful ideas, loads of precious time reading my babblings on and listening ears to me. i am busy carving out space for myself to just be where i am, right here, now and in this moment and not allow my mind to be flooded by all of the worry and swirling madness i find circling so closely around me.

as they say here, "Hideeeee, ciao ca cega!"