A Typical Atypical Day in My Life

A long time ago (like high school long ago) I was chatting with my dad in the car, and we were reminiscing about a past family vacation. My dad guessed that the vacation was the summer before I entered 5th grade and I remember cutting in, "--It's wasn't 5th grade, it was 4th grade!" and he apologized, telling me that he was old, his memory was a little fuzzy, and the years kind of blended together. And it was true, I realized. For the past ten, fifteen years, he had been living in the same house with the same job, and year after year probably seemed pretty similar. "Whoa," I thought, "that's what it means to be old." Okay "old" is an overstatement, maybe "an adult" would fit better there.

Since then, I've operated under the idea that as long as I could look back one year ago to the day, and see that my life was pretty different in some major way, then I could still consider myself young. :) It makes for pretty interesting self-reflection! So this time last year I lived in my own studio in suburban Japan teaching English to over 200 high school students. Two years ago I was finishing up my senior thesis and getting ready for graduation. This year I'm back at home, teaching part time in first grade and looking forward to grad school in the fall. Always different, all exciting :)

That's a long way of saying, here's my day in the life post(yesterday, Thursday):

6:17am - Start to the day
Okay, I don't know why I set my alarm to this time, but it works for me. As I was getting ready I remembered that today was our school's Cinco de Mayo celebration, so I put together an outfit of a traditional looking blouse with stretchy jeans. Totally didn't know what to do with my hair though, but I got some help later.

7:15am - Drive to School/Work
On the way to school I've shamelessly taken to listening to Ryan Seacrest's morning show on 102.7. Maybe it's the inner secret sports journalist in me but I love the way a radio show seems to get put together with interviews, DJ-directed content, and audience-generated content. This morning's show was especially hilarious with "Ryan's Roses"--I'll skip the story but let's just say, if a strange person calls to offer you a dozen roses for free, always send them to your significant other...or maybe your mom.

9:30am - Cinco de Mayo celebration
I always get a little out of place with these special celebrations and parties at school when the parents or other teachers are hosting them...where do I go? Should I help out? Is it okay to participate in the activities? For example, I got my face painted but I didn't eat any tortillas...am I just thinking too much about this? Being relatively new to the school I still wonder like this a lot.

11:45am - Lunch Duty aka Building Conflict Resolution Mediation Skills while Roasting Under the Sun
Nothing is more frustrating than trying to keep first graders in their seats when a bee is sighted. Enough said.

12:45pm - Going solo
Since I went to the Cinco de Mayo celebration with half of our students in the morning, the main teacher went with the second half in the afternoon. Because there were way fewer students in the classroom, I started posting our "culture mobiles" around the classroom while getting on one of the bigger ladders. That, plus de-stapling old art projects to make room for the new projects we were be posting soon, I was standing on top of ladders and counters for a good while.

1:50pm - Beginning Art Projects 
We're in the midst of art project overdrive, with at least one art project from each continent (except Antarctica). I thought it would be really cool to try these carp kites from Japan. I'll definitely update once they're finished!

3:30pm - Tutoring
3x a week I tutor a third grader in math/homework after school nearby my house and church. It's nice to have a little more income, and it's really nice to get to know a student and teach someone a little older. Today my student put on some reflexology gloves from her mom's office and was asking me things like, "What's a pancreas?" and "What are reproductive organs?" A great conversation stemmed from, "What are hormones? I always here that in ___ TV show but I don't know what it is." Very interesting conversation indeed.

5:00pm - Make dinner, Unwind
The other day I made lemony tilapia fillets with sauteed mushrooms, but today since tutoring ran long I just had a turkey sandwich. After my dad came home he made me a mango smoothie and we chilled out to some NBA games. In general during this time I'd play with my doggie, catch up on old TV, chat with some of my friends abroad and far away. It is a work day after all ;).

I actually got a text from my mom during this time saying that she was at the hospital with my grandpa. She didn't seem too alarmed, since he was in the hospital earlier this week, so I just guessed that it was a followup. It turned out that they were re-admitting him to get a pacemaker tomorrow (Friday). My mom's a nurse so she would know the info if there was anything to worry about, but still any nice thoughts you could send to my family and the healthcare professionals helping him out, I'd really appreciate it.

9:30pm - Hanging out with the boy
As my friends do know, my boyfriend lives in Boston while I'm in LA, and actually for the past month he's been in Taiwan and China. We do our best to make it work though, and thankfully Facetime and Skype has made it really easy to have video chat with anyone around the world. Talking with him always gets me a little sleepy, maybe it's the time difference, or maybe it's cuz it's nice to relax when he's around. Seriously though, if I just gave in and fell asleep then I would have had 3 extra hours of sleep...but that would be the smart decision ;)

11:00pm - Inside the NBA, catching up with Mom
After all the NBA games finish for the day, the commentary and post-game analysis are just as fascinating to me. My mom finally makes it home so we catch up. Other days we've been doing research for our trip to Europe coming up in June. I never knew that tour books could be so closely read until we started planning for this trip.

12:00am - Catching up with friends, procrastinating on sleep
Tomorrow (Friday) I'll be subbing for the main teacher of our class, so I really should get some rest and build up some energy for it! I know my day is pretty quiet but since I'm sick this week I've been taking it easy, and since my toe injury last month I stopped ballet classes for now. Hopefully both those things will be remedied and I can get back to more active activities :)

Thanks for reading! Happy Friday everyone!