Life Feels Hard

As you may have guessed by our lack of humor, or writing, for that matter over these past few weeks, Joel and I are barely making it through each day (Joel is making it, I am barely making it). Obviously we are sheltered, clothed, fed (with Oreos), and are for the most part healthy, but our emotional state is somewhat lacking in its essential elements of survival. We have been pushed to find parts of our personalities we didn't even know existed. I've seen Joel actually angry...and that is a rare, rare occasion. I think maybe the only other time I have seen him mad was when I yelled at him for not killing a spider fast enough when we first got married.

These kids are hard. And annoying. And lazy. And disrespectful. And the list goes on... I have worked with sex offenders... 11-18 year old boys who are most likely in jail since the last time I saw them. They swore at me, they physically tried to hurt me, they threatened to kill me, and said various other things that only Joel and my former co-workers will hear me say. Somehow, these kids are worse. How is that? How can I handle all boys...all teenage boys...who have severly damaged other people's lives, but I can't handle these kids? How is it that I actually enjoyed and miss working with those boys, but can't wait to get out of this place? I really have no idea, these are just my thoughts. I think it may be that I can't control these kids. They don't respect me or enjoy me. At least the sex offenders, in their calm and competent states, enjoyed me. They made me laugh and they laughed at me. They were generally fun to be around and would listen to me, even help me, if one of the boys went crazy. We are absolutely alone in our struggle to teach these kids. Granted, teaching kids English is not as serious of a task as keeping kids from killing each other, and failure to make it doesn't heed very drastic results on anyone but us, but still.

Yesterday was the last straw for Joel in his worst class. After kicking 7-8 kids out of class he then proceeded to talk to the guy who is supposed to be our English help about the class. He communicated things we've been saying over and over again about the lack of discipline in the school and the lack of more then 3 students per class that pay attention in our classes. This "conversation" and an eventual trip to see who we think is the headmaster of the school ended up leading to 3 apology letters from the students in his bad class. The letters were their discipline...and the letters we're written for them by the 1 girl in the class who knows any English. This complete lack of any sort of justice just kills me. For those of you who know me well, you know I can't handle things that are unfair (I am not saying its a good quality). I just get a little firey and this fruitless action made me irritated. I want justice, revenge, retribution. Some form of punishment would be nice. Yes, this sounds terrible, but its true.

Well anyway, enough ranting. I started this post yesterday and now I am trying to finish it while being home with a migraine. I can't really get angry or I'll just make my head hurt worse :)

Other random updates:
1. This morning I felt sick and needed to...well, go to the bathroom...quickly,but Joel was showering. If you've seen pictures of our bathroom you would know it is impossible to do both at the same time unless I wanted to get soaking wet. So, I went to the bathroom this morning while holding an umbrella.

2. Joel taught one of my classes this morning and had all of them write me get well cards. We will post the most hilarious ones later, but the main idea was that I should eat apples to give me power and wear more clothes because it is getting colder and colder in Anji (the highs are in the 60s).

3. We're playing a significant amount of ping pong lately.

4. We've started watching Grey's Anatomy online and I am (we are) addicted. I am a little too emotionally attached and end up crying anytime someone in the show dies, which happens nearly every episode. We watch at least 2 episodes a day.

5. We miss home and the fall and pumpkin lattes. The closest Starbucks (2 hours away) told me they might have pumpkin lattes at Christmas. Christmas?!

6. We tried to bake our first item in the rice cooker this week. Coffee cake! It turned out okay, but mostly just burned all around the outside so badly that a few pieces tasted like smoke. Next time we'll try to bake on the "keep warm" setting rather than shove a fork into the lever to keep it on the "cook rice" setting. We'll let you know how it goes.