I thought I had to teach this morning at 8am.  Silly me.  It turns out that there are no classes on the last day of the semester.  Why would there be classes on the last day of the semester? You might also wonder why no one told me there were no classes on the last day of the semester but that seems to be an unanswerable question

Good thing I worked really hard to finish reading, correcting and responding to student papers and preparing my lesson plans for class today.

When I got to school, there were three students standing outside of our classroom.  The hallway lights were dark and the door was locked.  This should have been when I thought: hum, what's going on.  But for some reason this was not the case. It was instead the start to a unexpectedly long day. <!--more-->My students tell me that they didn't think the others are coming today.  I should have asked why they were there at 8am if their peers were not but again this may have been a question with no answer.  This said, I like these kids and it's not often that you just get to talk to them and hear them practice their English "free-style"--if you will.

We talked for a while and then when it was clear that no one else was coming we went across the street for a coffee and to practice more English.  This was really fun.  It was good to hear them talking outside of the lessons that I work on them with because it gave me a sense of the other kinds of things that I need to work on with them.  Their vocabularies are getting big enough that they worry about finding the right word rather than a good word sometimes at the expense of the conversation.

After an hour in the coffee shop we went back to school to see what was going on, at this point it was clear that there were no lessons today.  Gerr.  Anyhow, I was able to write down my schedule for next term--the term starts on Monday (next Monday--Monday, February 2nd) and I just got my schedule today.  For the record, it looks like it may have been posted since the beginning of the week but I didn't learn my schedule until today.

I just don't know how the school can function when it seems to me that everything is done so last minute but it does make me wonder if it's a matter of perspective.  Yes, I am beginning to wonder if it's--me.  I know, I know.  It's crazy talk wondering: could it me? and not them?

Anyhow, at this point I could be annoyed with the whole situation (day) or I can take it in stride.  I decided to try to do the second.  So when the school secretary asks me if I'll be attending the teacher's meeting and the party taking place today--<em>which I had never been told about</em>--I smile and say: of course.

So I had a second coffee to kill some time before the meeting and then sat through an hour and a half teacher's meeting of which I understood about 2%.  This means that I understood the class names and numbers that the teachers were reporting.  Then I learned that the schedule I had written down earlier was incorrect and all of the times I'd written in my planner were off by an hour and 20 minutes.  Great.  I smiled at the teacher who told me this.

Sure, I'll be happy that I didn't show up to class early or late next week but then had to cross out 14+ classes and times that I'd written in my planner and the worst thing about this is that I hate making a mess of my planner.  Oh and I am going to be reminded of it for the next four weeks until I get through the days I had to cross out and re-write.  It could be worse.  I could have spent the entire teacher's meeting writing in my then incorrect schedule into my planner for the rest of the school year.  Thank-god I didn't do that.

After the teacher's meeting, I had to wait around for another hour plus for the party to start.  I knew that based on the last party we had in the teacher's room, there would be alcohol to drink.  I was not disappointed.  I had a whisky and coke, ate some food and then walked home in the cold gray rain.

At home, I checked my email, decided not to respond to any of them and then melted into a human puddle on my couch for an hour.  What a day, what a day.  Luckily, we've got the next two days off from school.  It is the end of the semester after all.  This is good for me--considering the day I had.

It's the kind of day that if I had a bottle of wine at home, I would probably be drinking it straight from the bottle--no glass necessary.  Only, I don't have a bottle of wine and the box of wine I do have is too difficult to drink from alone without a glass.  So I'm left to recount my day on my blog.  And what a day it's been.