near-weekend update

Mentally, still not feeling very good. My Chilean friend at school is still pissing me off. After another conversation today which made me angry but she seemed to enjoy, combined with someone telling me weeks ago that she was jealous, I think she's playing a Chilean cultural game between men and women. I don't have any other way to explain the information I have, her incredible level of non-listening, or the looks on her face at various points in the conversation. Obviously I don't know what role I'm supposed to play, so I'm going to start ignoring her pushing. If her feelings are actually hurt about something, to hell with her, she can figure out how to talk about it like a North American.

But, hey! I get to teach aikido! Jorge is going out of town for the long weekend of the 9th-11th, so I'm teaching on Tuesday the 12th, and if I'm not busy, Saturday the 9th. I love teaching aikido, and I don't get to do it very often, because Aikido West has approximately 762634672 people with higher rank and more experience, in line to teach ahead of me. Seriously, it's absurd. In most parts of the world a 4th-degree black belt will be giving a seminar and it'll be a big weekend thing; at Aikido West, we'll have 3 of them discussing which of them takes over the Sunday morning class if the instructor doesn't show up.

Some people don't like teaching aikido, which seems as strange to me as people who like teaching Chilean high school students. (There aren't a lot of those. It should be clear that I love my kids, but even the Chilean teachers are regularly pretty frustrated with their work, and you know how it is for me.) Some folks hate being the focus of attention, or feel they don't have anything worth saying, or don't feel they can teach in a way that works, or who knows what else.

Tomorrow makes 7 weeks until I'm done teaching, and today is 4 weeks until Anna visits. The time is ticking down.