Hobbit-Sense at OneFreeGarden.com

Here’s hoping the link is correct, because the time difference has put me ahead– wooohooo!  Well… technically I should be getting dressed, etc., so we’ll see how quick these quick takes can be!

1.  I need lists.  You know why?  Because otherwise I’ll plan a shopping trip, get to the store, and have no clue why I’m there.  Luckily this week I remembered this before I went to the store I’d planned to go to on Tuesday– nice because Moscow is a large city and to get good prices you have to travel.

2.  I need lists for things like Quick Takes because after posting last week, and mentioning how I’d saved up some, etc., I realised I hadn’t remembered more than one of the things I’d planned to mention.  Do I remember them now?  Er….

3.  I remember this one!   Anyone else gotten some funny suggestions from Facebook?  It’s been trying to tell me how to treat people I know… of course, not every FB friend is, in fact, a person…

Do you think the Pope would mind if I scribbled my affection on the side of St. Peter’s?  …  Really?  Darn.  Guess I’ll just have to keep going to Mass and praying to Jesus.

4.  I was thinking about my recent preponderance on food on this blog… it’s very strange, because I don’t actually eat tons.. I tend towards one actual meal and then fruit or bread or what have you.  I think it’s because I actually completely love preparing food for a group… especially one in which my very basic cooking skills look good by comparison.  Have to make some things a bit more obviously good for you… I love making veggie soups but for a 50 minute metro ride to a friend’s, not so much.

5.  I have gotten the Moscow Bargain Hunter seal of approval from my local manager and other teachers.  A teacher from Brooklyn but of Russian descent (and now Russian marriage, speaks fluently, etc.) recommended this place as similar to a TJ Maxx and thank goodness she was right– a friend and I went and we did very well.  We did so well, in fact, that most people have been double-checking that they’re not used… no, they’re just past season.  Score one for the bargain-ator;  this city is pricey.

6.  Speaking of other human beings… amazing what a concerted effort towards NOT being a hermit will do for one’s social life.  I don’t dislike other people- actually, I LOVE people.  I just have this natural proclivity for avoiding them like the plague for reasons unbeknownst even to me.  The food and people love are coming together, though- a group of us are getting together on Sundays.

7.  And a serious one… if you haven’t seen my reflections on that Ten Prayers book, do check them out (Sage Sayings: World Record Sinners;  Outdo Me, Lord; Upping the Ante;  listed in chronological order as well as order of increasing awesomeness).  I think the prayer about asking God to use one as an instrument… well, let’s just say it’s more evidence that the book is on target, because I think God has been using me as such the last couple weeks.  I sure hope so anyway!

alright… that’s it… gack 15 minutes to dress and get the heck out of dodge… bye!

-theRosyGardener

Logically, I think it’s fairly easy to come to the conclusion that that annoying person you don’t really know (or perhaps do know) who’s currently driving you nuts may have something on their plate– and that it may be a lot bigger than whatever is really bothering you, even though it doesn’t seem that way.  It’s really hard to swallow it, though, when you’re driving, or are counting on something, or are inconvenienced in a noticeable way.

It gets a lot easier to remember when you become “that person” for someone else.  I could just tell that another teacher at my school was really really frustrated on Wednesday, and probably felt he’d been slighted in favor of me.  We all get asked to do placement tests- and honestly, I get asked to do plenty, and even have been in the five-minute break in a 2 1/4 hour class.  And most of the time I do them, because I don’t mind and want to be helpful.  But  Wednesday was a bit disasterous for me.  So this teacher walked in, learned that he could in fact have come earlier as he would have wanted to, saw me at the computer, and was asked to do a placement test by the local manager.

I could feel his upset radiating, and it felt like it was atleast partly in my direction.  And I think I probably would’ve been a bit pissed, too, when someone who had gotten there early and apparently could be gallivanting around the internet wasn’t being asked or had been given first refusal at the least.  And he also was upset that apparently he could have come at three, found everything unlocked, and had plenty of time to do all his photocopying, etc.

And these are completely justified reasons.  And I’ve been that same person whining about the bad drivers, the annoying coworkers, the grating personalities- and I’ve had good reasons.  What I haven’t always had is compassion for those other people.

If he hadn’t felt slighted and harried– two feelings he was more than entitled to– he might have thought of a few things.

One is that we have a new local manager, and I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with the fact that the old one didn’t get there till 3:15, even with classes beginning at 3:45.  The new one’s been there at 3 every time I’ve been there early, my classroom’s nearly always unlocked, and that day, there was a student doing a written placement test before the oral one.  He simply hadn’t realised what a ‘regime change’ would mean.

As for my part– well, my Wednesday sucked.  I woke up with a nasty cold I hadn’t had the night before.  I put together all these Halloween materials on my computer, uploaded them online, went off to a seminar, then went to a central school location to print out the materials I’d put together and do some photocopying.

I got ONE page out of 6 for my teenaged advanced class to print, and it was the one I was the least certain I would use.  I had to re-download all sorts of other activities I’d found and put in one location because only one computer had firefox (which I needed for my online storage) and yet that computer stopped printing after that first fateful page.  The photocopier went spastic and wouldn’t copy.  And did I mention my nasty cold?

I didn’t have time to go to another location to try to print- so I figured I’d ask if I could use the computer at the satellite school I work at on Wednesdays.  I explained to the local manager, who was there before 3, which is when I got there, and she helped.  The computer was slow and annoying, it didn’t have firefox, and apparently on my school’s computers downloads from emails are banned, so the precautionary self-email I’d done didn’t work either.  I ended up scouring the internet for anything I could use to replace it.  It was a less than successful search.  I had a few minutes to photocopy for classes whose plans had effectively been savaged, except for the one class taking a test (my hand-drawn pumpkin did the trick for them).

The young kids taking a test were pure torture.  My teens got a pretty crappy lesson.  My adults luckily are a cheery group but the lesson was flat.  Basically, it was a miserable failure of a day as a teacher.

I know that probably sounds self-pitying, and since I still have this nasty cold it may well be.  But I think overall, I probably got quite a lot out of that awful day (and Thursday was pretty good, actually, so don’t think it’s all doom and gloom).  What did I learn?

Well, to logically know that those annoying people have their own problems is one thing.  To see how you can be that person for others, and actually have bigger problems than they do (it’s not that difficult to do a placement test)– it’s a different story.

I wish I could say I won’t kvetch about the slow driver or rude person, or whomever, in the future, but I probably will.  I hope, though, I remember in short order just how crappy it can be to be that person.

~theRosyGardener