Unmotivated and Uninspired

Unmotivated and Uninspired


yep, I'm bored. I have only 4 months to go before the end of the school year, till my passport expires and I head to London to get a new one.

I'm really starting to look forward to getting back to the western world. Perhaps I have given up trying with Ethiopia. A place is only as good as you make it, and at the moment I'm not really pulling my weight to make it as spectacular as it could be.

I do little things to keep myself entertained. I'm starting to write autobiographical fairytales. I'm painting a mural on my office wall after hours. I have volunteered to lead a workshop in teaching English to English teachers of another school (I've been an English teacher for less than a year and they think I'm qualified to teach other teachers). I have been looking through my Oxford dictionary for baby names for my brothers baby (from the As Able for a boy and Aperture for a girl ?) so far I have found nothing worthy of passing on. I maintain my fingernails beautifully, almost everyday they are painted a new colour(s), today they are teal. The fact that I never do the dishes helps a lot, my nails have never been so long or so strong.

I'm sick of being dirty (if I removed all the blackheads from my face and my back I'd look like the lost twin sister of sponge-bob square-pants), I'm sick of having no big projects, nothing important (to me) to do. I'm sick of not having close freinds nearby, I'm sick of being sick. I'm sick of eating the same food everyday. I'm sick of watching TV.

I'm just going though a phase and I'd like to think that I'll be over it by the end of this month. So till then I need to focus on on the positive things and to stop cutting my hair for something to do (in an attempt to grow out the beegees fringe in a stylish way I have cut my hair in a Cameron Diaz style... needless to say I don't look like Cameron Diaz).

Positive things: huge glasses of fresh avocado and pinapple juice I drink everyday for 0.35usd and endless blue skys. The first proper shower after the water has been off for a few days. Having a maid who (now on her final warning) makes my bed everyday, does my laundry weekly and washes all of our dishes. Those occational days when my students say something really cool.

It's kind of scary what an effect a a teacher can have on their students conciously or subconciously. My old fifth grade class were asked to name four animals in a test. The majority of kids included amoung their list: rat, snake, scorpion, spider or fox despite these not being popular animals in Ethiopia. I often used those animals as examples even though they are percieved as not particually beautiful ...cause theya re cool.

Ebony, our American flatmate left for Tailand, and with her went her boyfriend who is still working in Addis, and the bedsheets, the blankets, the bed coverings, the pillows, her rubbish bin, and her laundry basket all bought by the school. But she did leave behind for us over 100usd in phonebills for December and January... can't wait to see if she left us a suppise on the February phonebill.

Her boyfreind has been back to return a faction of the bed linen and leave some money. I'm trying to track Ebony by email to sort it out. Who does that? who steals from an African school and leaves without mentioning that a lot of international phonecalls had been made, or leaving behind money to cover it? That's just not cricket.