now that i have a moment...

...to breathe, i can blog.

so, before i get started on how stressed and crazy i've been lately, i have to start off this blog with some good news, the best kind there is! christina chen is engaged! the first one of my good friends to get married. aww. i seriously can't wait for the wedding even though it's over a year from now. that's going to be the best wedding ever.

okay, now onto my horrible past two weeks. well, not so much horrible. just...i haven't been so stressed out, frazzled, tired, hungry, cranky, and overwhelmed in a long time. the last time i was like this was probably during finals when i was in school. so for the last week and a half, i've been teaching the world studies class at wisdom. and when i say "teaching," i mean flying by the seat of my pants (or skirts actually). i only have two more days to go in this session and i just can't wait for it to be over. i mean, i do like these kids because they're really funny and bright but only on a one-on-one basis. when they're all together in groups of thirty, i just want to kill myself. honestly, i don't know how actual teachers do it. i have so much respect for them and am truly appalled at how underpaid and underappreciated they are. and my anger at asian parents has increased. it's easy to see how the bad behavior of certain kids gets reinforced at home. and, okay, i know that kids don't come with instruction manuals and it's not easy being a parent, but some of these parents just seem to lack common sense. like sending their kid to school without a pencil. i mean, c'mon, what are you thinking?! i know it's supposed to be a fun summer camp type school, but still. what do you expect your kid to write with - his blood? argh.

the second graders amuse me though. as wild and tribal and undisciplined as they are, they're still highly amusing and entertaining. yesterday (and today), we made african masks. david suggested that they play hide and seek with the antelope-masked kids and the rabbit-masked kids hiding and the hunter-masked kids seeking. it was pretty funny watching all the antelope and rabbit kids running to the SAME hiding spots as other antelope and rabbit kids. and then watching as all the kids with hunter masks run around like the wild, crazy hellions they are. i really like that word - hellion. anyway, two more days. i just have to survive two more days.

AND...on top of all of that, i got a new job last week. unfortunately, i got the new job right at the beginning of this last session of wisdom (last monday), so that definitely contributed to my insanely high stress level. i'm working at milestones which is an early intervention program for children with autism. i'm working part time at the moment, tutoring a 4-year-old boy. i'll call him K. i was definitely overwhelmed when i started because they pretty much just threw me in there to train me. not only that, but K is the first kid i've met with autism. so i've been training with his other tutors this whole past week and the beginning of this week. tomorrow, i start working with him alone. which is kind of scary. although i do feel a bit better about this now than i did at the beginning. i honestly started to feel like it might've been too much to handle and i didn't know if i was cut out for it. but i've been learning a lot from the other tutors and his parents and i've become a lot more confident. today was a good day. K is starting to listen to me a bit more. for the past week, he's just been testing me. pushing me to see what he can get away with with me. so he's been extra difficult just for me. you can see now why i've been so stressed.

so for these past two weeks, i've been working everyday from 9 to 5 with loud, crazy kids. i think once wisdom is over (two more days!), i'll definitely be able to handle K a lot better. it's just that i'm so tired when i go to work with him that i get stressed so much more easily. i work at wisdom in the mornings from 9 to 12 and then go over to K's house in the afternoons from 2 to 5 (or 230 to 530). and then, when i get home, i have to work on the next day's activities for wisdom. so i've just been working, working, working. i've actually been so stressed out these past couple weeks that i've lost weight. i mean, i wanted to lose weight but not like this. i've been so busy that, a lot of the time, i just forget to eat. that's how i know that i'm definitely stressed out. two more days...two more days... if i can just hold out for two more days, i'll be okay.

anyway, other than my working life, i've been okay. last last weekend (july 23), i went to raging waters with the wisdom group (me, deb, david, san, kuan, ha) and mike. that was pretty fun. i hadn't been to a water park in so long. actually, i think the last time i went was senior year of high school during that one school trip. so sad. but it was fun. my top flipped up when i landed in the water after going down this one slide. same thing happened to ha. both of us were wearing string bikinis. we landed in the water so forcefully that our tops just flipped right up. luckily, we were both submerged when it happened. i actually stayed down under water to fix my top, then swam up.

and then this past weekend, i went to the gilroy garlic festival with deb, david, ha, mike, chris, and victor. it was okay. i don't know if it was worth the traffic time though. it usually takes maybe 45 minutes to get to gilroy. it took us 2 hours. there was this one 3-mile stretch that took us half an hour. the food was good though and it wasn't TOO hot. ha and i had a little run-in with an old drunk guy though. we were in line waiting to buy loaves of garlic bread when old drunk guy (let's just call him ODG) taps me on my shoulder and asks me if anyone has ever counted all the stars on my back (from my tattoo). i say no and turn around. there's a long pause. and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he shouts, "39!!" i just ignored him. but i found him more sad than creepy. i think ODG was drunkenly trying to chit chat with us before the tattoo thing too. i don't remember what we were talking about. i do remember giving ha a look like, oh shit. and then the others said that when he was counting the stars on my back, he was leaning in really close and hella staring. gross. it's just sad though that ODG was, well, old and drunk and seemingly all by himself. but, still, gross. and, for the record, there are actually 40 stars on my back.

okay, i'm getting tired now. and this blog is probably incredibly long. and the text is probably still screwed up. ugh. oh well. i'll fix it later. or try to anyway. i want to end on a happy note so - yay, chris is getting married! chris is getting married! it makes me feel really old and really young all at the same time.