Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Airports

I drove my baby sister to the airport this morning. It's funny how you're brain wanders at 6am as it's still trying to wake up.

The first place it wandered to was from her comment about how peaceful out it was at this time of morning. I couldn't help but think that for three years I was driving to work at that time of morning every morning.

My first year of non-teaching is almost up, and it feels kind of weird. I've decided I miss teaching. However, I don't miss what I was doing. I don't miss the public school system and the sometimes frustrating and useless feeling that I would get from doing a job that it sometimes seemed that many people involved could care less about whether I did well just so long as I kept the right statistics high enough. I don't miss grading thousands of papers and spending every free moment of my life somehow involved in planning or grading.

So where does that leave me? I don't know. I think sometimes that I would like to go back to the classroom, but it would have to be something different. I don't want to teach literature any more. Straight writing, possibly, although then I'm still looking at thousands of papers to grade! I still think TESOL would be fun, but I really don't relish the idea of being back in the public school system at all. I guess that's a door that I'm going to have to see if God opens for me, and until then I will carry on with what I feel He has called me to do currently. And I do feel that I have been led here to where I am.

When I consider everything we've been through the last year and the idea that I might not have only been teaching last year but I would have been department head - I breathe a sigh of relief that He gave me the conviction that I needed to not be teaching this year. I know that the amount of stress and frustration we've been under the last year would have made teaching this year horrific. And, the position I have wound up in is something that I'm watching slowly growing and expanding in what it means, and I really do believe that I'm where I am supposed to be - at least for now.

The second place to which my brain was wandering was the fact that my sweet baby sister is not only nearly 19 years old, but she's officially a sophomore in college now. And she's been here for a whole year now. Well, not here in this town specificallly but here in America. It's hard for me to believe that much time has passed. I know it's hard for her to believe it as well! It seems like only yesterday we were shopping for sheets and dishes for her dorm room.

It's been an interesting year watching her grow up into a college student. She's had some bad times and done some dumb things, but I know she's also had some glorious moments and I've been so impressed by her spirit and the beautiful woman she is becoming. I'm glad she decided to come here. One of the problems with being an MK is that family relationships can be a bit weird at times. For example, the fact that my brother, sister, and I are all living in the same town together at the same time for the first time in 15(?) years since he was in high school, I was in middle school, and she wasn't even in school.

Because she's so much younger than I am, I've missed out on some of the "getting to know you" time, I guess. It's been nice to make up for that time.

The third thought that kept randomly bumping into the other two (and please understand, while I can write all this comprehensively, it certainly wasn't coming out that way in my brain!) was how much I wished I could be going too.

Truthfully, as much as I would like to be with my parents, it's not even necessarily going back to Thailand and going home but just going somewhere. Moving, preferably. Away. Far away. Maybe to Thailand. Maybe to Europe. I'd even be happy with Africa or even Australia. Probably not South America - no particular reason why - just never felt really drawn there! But, if it meant being away.....I would take South America!

It's not that I hate American; I really don't. I've made my peace with this country, and in many ways it is home. But I've had a lot of restlessness lately. I look at various friends of mine -- one has moved to New Zealand, another is on his way to Indonesia, a third is going to Turkey, and of course I have friends who have gone to Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, China........and I want to go as well.

Any ways, those are my random early morning airport-run thoughts.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice thoughts :)
--my little sister just graduated from college and it seems so strange to have her back here. She's been at school longer than Celia has been alive!

HAPTeach said...

Oh my! How our thoughts are similar at the same time is crazy! I just blogged about teaching too. Love ya!

Diego said...

You should get your Master's and teach at the college level. I think you would enjoy that more.

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