Signs That Tet Is Overdue

Signs that it has been a very long, tiring, sickly month since being told I hadn’t got the AC job, and that the Tet (New Year) holiday next week can’t come soon enough:

• The most interesting thing I could think of to write about last week was the purchase of a frying pan.
• A growing sense of paranoia and frustration at the lack of movement on all my strategic plans to get that next AC job. Coupled with lethargy from this cold that just won’t shift.
• I had to spend the whole of Sunday plugged into my iPod whenever I was in the staffroom, to stop me ripping someone’s head off. As it was, I managed to make an eleven year-old girl cry.
• I didn’t bother adapting or finding anything more interesting for my S6’s (13 year old advanced class) but made them do the book’s long (and very boring) listening and writing exercises about the Incas.
• Last weekend a trainee TA was treated to me jumping up and down and flapping my arms in front of her, shrieking ‘Stop running away from me, I’m trying to talk to you!’ She’d obviously got it into her head that when monitoring we couldn’t both be in the same part of the classroom at once.
• Waking up to dense white smog every morning is pretty depressing. To British eyes it looks like a cold, wet, miserable day in November. Only warm. And with more carcinogens…

Smog

• I’m missing Italy… Yes, you read that right… I’m missing Italy. Or more specifically, the light, the clear blue skies and the sea. Briefly worried that I would have to get Baggy, Oye and Jacques to give me a good email/skype talking to, to stop me teetering over the edge into checking flights to Rome.
• Instead, I’ve been spending late nights downloading Laura Pausini and Tiziano Ferro tracks from iTunes. Whatever that admission might do for my street cred, it’s actually been strangely soothing. A couple of days of those two on the iPod and I now feel much better.
• Some of the neighbours held an all-day party in the street yesterday. By the time I went to bed their out of tune singing was quite endearing. I was tempted to go down and join in.
• The neighbourhood kids have developed their own local version of Welly-Wanging… Flip-flop Flinging. All very professional and competitive, with lines chalked out and everything.
• And (fingers crossed) perhaps as Saigonites escape the city for Tet, the traffic will clear and the smog will lift – there are already traces of blue in the sky. Might not need to head back to Italy after all…

Chúc Mung Nam Moi 2011!!