Downtime

While my fingers haven't been broken, I haven't had the time (nor much inclination, for some reason) to post. The new school year started off rather anticlimactically. The first 3 days were spent doing ceremonies. The first day was a welcome for new teachers as well as the new 1st year class. This of course involved all the new teachers (yours truly included) getting up on the stage and being introduced in front of the entire school assembly. Day two was a farewell to teachers who'd gone, so everyone who'd had to (involuntarily, of course) switch schools went back to their old place of work to accept flowers and give about 3 speeches each. Talk about boring. Not to mention the constant bowing-from-the-chair to various teachers, students, or VIPs passing by.

I think I'll like the schools I'm at. The first school wasn't terribly exciting. The teachers are a bit older and not as outgoing. Not to mention they were incredibly busy the first week, so I didn't have much time to get to know them. Perhaps I will later. The 2nd school I went to I spent all last week there. It's one that I'd gone to before, the one that has as its sister school the Orchard School in Indy. Small world, eh? I loved the teachers and students there, and it felt very comfortable and familiar being back again. The 3rd school I came to yesterday. It's pretty small, only 300-odd students. The kids are really friendly, and the teachers are pleasant. There are only 3 English teachers, 2 of whom are younger than I, and the 3rd is a very much-young-at-heart lady. They're quite nice to talk to, but the teachers here have an unpleasant tendency to constantly insist I take part in the club activities. While it's good for the kids, they don't always want me around, nor do I always want to deal with their 13 year-old banter and jokes. While it can be fun, sometimes I just don't want to do that.

I'm starting to get back into a routine again, which is nice. The gym beckons, I've been going back, but sporadically. I enjoy seeing the people there, but my social calendar's been a bit full. Too much going out and spending money. I was doing ok, until last week. My friend Erin went to Thailand. She came back with a friend from home, and I took it upon myself to show her around. It was good, but I spent a bit too much, but I did get to attend the local soccer match.

Beyond that, the main reason I haven't written is that my computer's been in a slow death spiral the past week or so. It started out a couple months ago when something funny would happen and I'd have to reset what hard drive was used first in the BIOS menu. Last week I started getting "disk read errors," which is a very bad thing. But it would usually start up again the next day. Well, I took steps to remedy that, but just as I was about to try and salvage everything from it, it seems to have made its final whir and up and died. I'm trying to recover what data I can from the other hard drive, I had a windows backup on it I might be able to salvage, though not for sure. I've backed up the important things that were on it (mostly my photos, at least through the end of last year), and everything else important is either on my flickr site (photos taken in 2006 up til mid-March) or they're in the hands of friends (Aaron, don't throw away those photos of your trip quite yet). I hate having things like this happen. And now I've gotta try and return the stupid drive, in addition to dealing with a new setup of windows, particularly changing all the settings to suit me.

So while I'm waiting for the data recovery program to finish, I'm off to a shower.