Laziness is...

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” – Sam Keen

Since our return from Hong Kong, we have done very little and only move when absolutely necessary. We stay up late. I sleep in. Don catches up on documentaries. When I get up, we watch more tv from the Internet. Periodically, I get hooked on a series and watch it for hours on end. It’s a great way to watch tv really, no waiting for the next week or the Fall season.

We’ve been on vacation since the middle of June. This has been our routine except for the few days we traveled. We had great plans. We would travel lots. We would prep for next semester. I wanted to study Mandarin from the books, cds and flashcards I have. But then laziness took over.

Traveling by ourselves turned out to be a lot more than we had bargained for. Then there was the money issue. Teaching English is not a lucrative career choice.

The hot days here make it uncomfortable to go outside much so we wait till evenings. It leaves us very unmotivated. That’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it.

It’s also been very quiet in our building. Rob, Don and I are the only teachers in the building over the summer. All the others have either left for good or will return for the next semester. Mr. Hou, the caretaker, is the only other person in this 5 floor, 20 unit building. For the two weeks we were gone, Rob pretty well had the place to himself. We had talked about playing some kind of drinking / bowling game in the empty hallways but then the laziness set in.

Luckily school starts again on August 28^th. I still don’t know if I have classes on that day yet. They’ll tell me next week. Don already knows his schedule and will have a busy day on Thursday, his busiest of the week. We’re looking forward to getting back to teaching and reminding the students what English sounds like. It’s highly unlikely that the majority of them practiced at all during the summer.

Our contract here is up at the end of January and what we do next is up for discussion. I’ve got to get back to the couch now. J xoxo

p.s. If anyone out there has any suggestions on what we should do next, we're open to your advice.