Day in the Life

Alright, an actual post about actual life for those of you who read this to have some clue of what my life is like/about. For the rest of you... who are you?? Leave me a comment and introduce yourself.

I've been in San Antonio for almost five weeks now (a fact that I can't wrap my brain around. I'm still working on accepting having been here a month), and tomorrow is the end of our first month of school. Plenty of time to settle into a routine. Those who know me know that I'm really not so good with getting into routines, although routines are invariably good for me. Fortunately for me, here at the convent life is pretty prescripted (at least more so than it is in the outside world).

Here's a typical weekday.

5:30 - My first alarm goes off.
5:42 - I start thinking about getting out of bed when the second alarm goes off.
5:58 - I usually actually get out of bed and throw on whatever teacher monkey suit I've put together for myself.
6:24 - Enter the chapel (next to the living room, under the sisters' rooms, and across from the cafeteria) for mass. Some weeks (like this one), the whole process moves up twenty minutes and I join the sisters for morning prayer. Otherwise, I say it on my own after mass before I go over for...
7:05 - Breakfast, where the sisters remind me why it's good to be alive. Not that I'd forgotten, but it's always nice to be reminded.

7:20 - Pick up various items of paper work from the office, silently thinking it must have been nice when kids just wandered in off the corn field and wandered back out. On to my class room to check e-mails, get settled, start acting like I know what I'm doing.
7:30 - Faculty prayer followed by faculty asking and telling each other things. This sometimes involves thinly-veiled-but-maturely-and-Christianly-handled hostility. These are the exciting days.
7:45 - The entire school assembles in the gym for prayer, announcements, and the president of the student council dressed as a bee handing out ribbons to children with birthdays. During this time, the kinder and first graders give their teachers a hard time, the second through fourth graders clap and sing and respond to rhetorical questions, and the fifth through eighth graders make every effort to hide even the faintest signs of interest.
8:00 - Home room. I attempt to talk over 7th graders who think I'm their friend.
8:15 - My free period, usually spent trying to make various computer programs essential to my ability to teach work, and failing in the attempt.

9:03 - Classes. Math, math lab, and 7th grade English.
11:20 - Lunch, praise be to God. Glory in the highest.
12:07 - More classes. Two sixth grade classes, one eighth grade class, and one fifth grade class. I consistently forget that I cannot make jokes of any variety with these kids, as I could with my high schoolers, because they loose their blessed little minds every time anything remotely amusing happens, and all the more so if it comes from me. I also wonder if I lapse into another language when I utter the phrase, "Be quiet", because they never seem to understand me.
3:15 - Dismissal. Picture the exodus in Texas with punchy teachers and junior high schoolers instead of oxen.
3:30 - Tutoring, or a faculty meeting.

4:00 - 6:20 - Heck, I don't even know. I usually think, "I'm going to do X, Y, and Z between tutoring and dinner," and usually end up getting a call from the sisters at 6:15 informing me it's time to come eat. I've developed a theory in which I am abducted by aliens daily during this time frame, and they have me run in circles just so I feel like I did something, but give me nothing to show for it.
6:20 - Dinner. The sisters remind me that not only is it good to be alive, I am indeed still alive, despite all evidence to the contrary.
7:00 - Chores, during which Sr. Thuy invents "la, la, la" songs that always, always, always make me laugh and delight me. Who knew scrubbing the pots from a meal for eleven every night could be relaxing?
7:30 - Back to my class room, usually. I think the aliens draw me back and re-abduct me, because I usually leave with exactly the same amount of work as I entered with.
9:00 - Sit in the VIDES office, check e-mail, read, blog, and other wise waste time. See -- I haven't changed a bit.
10:00 - In my room. Clean things, make sure I don't smell, write letters, call people... possibly get abducted by aliens yet again because next thing I know it's...
11:00 - Bed time, believe it or not.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Tomorrow is Homecoming (yes, middle schools have homecoming). Expect massive post on that sometime Saturday!