December 2008

Just before the Thanksgiving break, I found myself in the interesting predicament of going from not much at all to do with my time, to having not enough time to anything but work. I was interview, "reviewed," and hired as an English teacher with the United Nations Cultural, Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), something I was immediately excited to have on my resume if nothing else, volunteering 12 - 14 hours at Saigon Children's Charity, tutoring three evenings a week, providing private ESL lessons for two hours once a week and taking Vietnamese lessons two evenings a week. To fill up my spare time, I picked up a contract research and writing assignment for a career mobility website writing, ironically given my experience in the past few months, about how to find work in Viet Nam. I was thrilled to have so much to do and to feel productive, not only by contributing to our family income, but by actually doing, at least a few things, that I love to do.

For the three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Steven was a man unto himself. While I sat, almost literally, glued to to our burgundy pleather couch for hours on end researching local companies, writing lesson plans and setting up interviews, Steven went shopping, cooked dinner, cleaned the house, planned his lessons and put up with my occasional outburst of "This is INSANE! How am I possibily going to get all this done in time to leave for Bali?!" and worked at his own full time teaching job. With a deadline of Friday, December 19th, I had an incredibly detailed research project to produce, over 250 three part-tests to grade, lessons to plan and a job to get up for at 6 in the morning four days a week.

Luckily things began to fall in place for me during the last week before vacation. I was informed that the students had a week off after exams, my tutoree canceled two evenings in a row to study for her own exams, my ESL student canceled one lesson on account of having so much of her own work to do and, apologizing profusely, I begged off of volunteer work for the week. With a week cleared of outside obligations, I sat and wrote. And sat and wrote. And sat and wrote. At 5 in the morning on Friday the 19th, just as Steven's alarm was going off to wake him up to set off for the airport, I was into my 24th consecutive hour of editing. I attached the now 68 page document to an email and hit send.

Feeling relieved to have completed my project before the deadline and grateful to have what had been a hellish month of little exercise, few showers and near complete dependence on my husband, behind me, I quickly straightened up the apartment, hauled on my pack and set off for a good solid two hours of sleep on the plane ride to Singapore.