I Never Go To Bed Upset

This is no easy job; I am challenged every day in ways that no job has ever challenged me before. Patience and flexibility are demanded from me everyday, two virtues I could always use improvement on. Most days I can handle these challenges. But some days, the normal everyday things are just a little hard to handle.

So today was one of the difficult days. There was nothing particularly terrible; most things were normal (for Moldova). But I was just having a hard time dealing with it. One of my partner teachers was not noticing how distracted the students were during our lesson. Several students were playing games on their cell phone, and a couple of students were working on homework for another class. I walked around the room to help eliminate this problem, but it frustrated me that she didn’t notice. I also was upset with myself because I don’t know how to teach “with-it-ness”.

And then when I was talking with another partner, she said that she wanted to change tomorrow's lesson plan so that we review material from the last lesson. While I was happy she was telling me she was changing the plan (she changes it a lot without telling me), I was slightly annoyed that she was changing it to something I suggested in our last planning time. When I had suggested it, she said a very strong ‘no’ and moved on without considering. I know, I sound like a child, but I had spent time making the material for the lesson we had planned and now we were changing it…to something I had suggested previously.

A lot of times when I’m working with my partner teachers and we are compromising, I feel like I’m the only one compromising. The logical side of me knows this can’t be true, but my ideas sure get a lot of no's and I feel like I just offer suggestions to improve their ideas. I guess with compromising, you always feel like you are getting the short end of the stick.

Anyways, I ended up going home kind of melancholy. But the nice thing about Moldova is that it seems to want me to be happy. My bad days never stay bad for the whole day, like today. I am tutoring two 10th form students, and it has become one of my favorite activities I do here. The girls want to learn English and they give me respect. Plus I like developing personal relationships with the students that I don’t get to do as well in the classroom.

So when we finished our lesson today, the girls asked me to stay for some cake and tea. I of course accepted, and we sat together eating our cake and drinking our tea. One of the girls’ mother and brother joined us. We all started talking, and I soon found myself smiling and happy. We were talking in Romanian, so I didn’t understand everything, but I was enjoying myself. The girl’s mother was very friendly and kind to me, paying me several compliments and giving her gratitude for me helping her daughter. We all talked and laughed and just had a good time.

I think the thing I like most about being in Moldova is that for all the complaints I have, I have just as many, if not more, great things to say about it.