Surprise, surprise. I've had a busy week.

That's why I haven't written a real post in days. <em>Days</em>.

I think that as a teacher the week back from any long holiday is a busy one. However, this week has been busier than most because on Friday, April 15th our third quarter at school ended.

In my world that means: grades, grades, grades. Students turning things in to grade. Students who want to check on their grade even though the day before they turned in the major paper for the quarter. Students wanting to make up missed quizzes. Students worrying about their grades.  And me, I am busy trying to grade things, to enter grades in my e-gradebook and write grades and comments for each of my students.

It's enough to make a girl want to pull her hair out, blind herself with a red pen or wish she'd never come back from her holiday. (Portugal seems impossibly far away right now.) So with each paper I read, I feel a little piece of myself dying inside. I've read over 60 papers this past week at between 3 and 5 pages each. Luckily, I've only got five left. And in a moment of clarity earlier this week, I sorted out the papers of my strongest writers to read last.

This said, the only thing really pulling me though this nightmare is the thought of Easter break next week, two holidays in May and two entire months off in July and August. Oh and it certainly helped that the weather has been pretty awful.

So what does this all boil down to? <!--more-->

Being a teacher has expanded to fill up every waking hour of my past week.

I'll leave you with this story.

I was at work so late on Wednesday night that I got locked into my building. <em>Gross</em>.

Turns out that after 7pm at night the campus guards don't expect anyone to be left at work. That is expect for me and my co-worker P. We were both still at school planning, reading and grading things. We were also both hanging around campus for book club but really, I probably would have gotten locked in the building either way.

That's how awesome (and sexy) my abroad life is.

The problem is, once you're locked in the building it's not so easy to get out. I called a couple of offices on campus of colleagues who I thought might still be around. No luck. So then I leaned out my second floor window and saw two campus guards. I yelled at them: hey. hey. hey. Until they noticed me. They are on the old side so it took them a long time to notice me.

Then I was rescued. It was my big Rapunzel moment. Only my hair is shoulder length.

And here's the sad part. This was maybe the most interesting thing to happen to me all week.

Here's to hoping this next week will be better.