Post Thanksgiving-ness

So yesterday was Thanksgiving. And today I think I might be dying.

Ugh.

I started feeling sick yesterday and now I just feel awful. My throat is all raw and aching and I cough if I try to talk, Not a good thing for a teacher. Luckily for me the lessons I had planned were already minimal on the talking for me. Today is Parent's Day, but the other teachers tell me that the parents might not even try to talk to me since they can't speak English. I hope I can get through today alright so I can just go home and go to bed. I am sitting at my desk debating if I have the energy to walk 4 steps to get a cup of water.

Yesterday was pretty normal. In my classes I showed two Thanksgiving day themed episodes of "Friends", partially because I figured it was a holiday and I wanted a break from teaching.

I asked June if she wanted to go get Thanksgiving dinner with me at this place called "Big Bamboo", a sports bar right down the street. I hadn't been yet and found on an expat website that they had a set Thanksgiving dinner meal (200rmb). It was her first time celebrating Thanksgiving, being born and raised in Shanghai. I also invited Ned, the econ professor from New York.

After work we walked over together. They had a bunch of choices for the appetizer (I ordered cream of cauliflower soup, which was quite tasty), then they had either turkey or ham with garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, steamed veggies, gravy, etc (I got turkey), and then pumpkin pie with ice cream for dessert. And one free drink. I got a glass of wine. Everything was pretty good, though not like my family cooks. I took a look at the menu and they had a LOT of choices. They had stuff like lobster bisque and fancy pants burgers and wraps and stuff. I am definitely going back to try something else. Maybe the next time I start craving American food.

After dinner I went back to my apartment. I cleaned a bit and tried to sleep but I couldn't sleep too well. I signed into windows messenger to wait for my family. Around 1:30am (my time) I got the call. I got shuffled around a lot and we had some trouble getting both the video and sound to work but finally it did and I got the chance to talk to my family. They set me up on a shelf or something and I watched them eat dinner while I had my leftover soup. Auntie Sue kept scaring the crap out of me by grabbing the microphone and talking into it.

I hope I wasn't an annoyance at dinner, or that people felt weird having me just sitting there watching them eat. Usually when people tried to talk to me they had to repeat themselves, so it was kind of troublesome. I still enjoyed it. I miss my family a lot and it was nice to be a part of their holiday in some small way. I said a rather abrupt goodbye since the chat was acting up and I needed to get to bed (as it was now around 3:40 am).

This morning I woke up at 9am. My first class starts at 9am. Oh crappity crap crap. I got dressed in a tornado of clothes and flew out the door, while getting a phone call from June that my students were looking for me. Good for them, I suppose. They could have just sat in the classroom hoping I had forgotten about them. Henry (the student that likes to say "Holy crap!") often shows up late to my class, so when I showed up late he came over to joke with me about it. Ah well. At least we still had enough time to watch both episodes of "Friends" even though we started about 10 minutes late.

I feel pretty sucky about being late. I must have slept right through my alarm because I don't remember hearing it. Being late normally makes me upset but being late as the TEACHER? With a class waiting for me? I feel a bit like a failure. And rather embarrassed. I guess staying up all night when I was already sick wasn't a good idea and I'm paying for it now.

Luckily and unluckily my plans for this weekend got canceled. Charlotte said she was feeling a bit disorganized and had stuff she needed to take care of so she asked if we could move our Nanjing trip to next weekend. At first I was reluctant but now I'm glad I agreed. I would NOT enjoy a long train ride feeling like this and it would ruin my time seeing Paul and Kyle if all I wanted to do was stay in the hostel and complain about being sick. We pushed it to next weekend. Oddly enough, next weekend is Revels. So we TMTers abroad can get together and miss Revels together.

I should go work on my lesson plan for next week since I don't have it planned yet but all I can think about is that cup of water. Imma go get it.

Man I feel like crap.

I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings.

Much love,
Stephanie