Finally-Nothing to Do

This month has seen two teacher trainings, two softball tournaments, and one site visit, which basically means that for all of October there hasn't been a single weekend I've had off.  The exhausting week spent teaching is never recovered from on the weekends.  And, even though all of these are things I enjoy, compressing them into the span of one month was unnecessary and destructive.

So, right now I'm sitting in my bed, where I've spent the majority of the past 24 hours, wrapped in warm pajama pants and listening to nice relaxing music.  I'm sick and have canceled everything in my life for the next 2 days and hope  it won't extend much beyond that.  For anyone wondering, having the flu in a foreign country is about as good as having it anywhere else, which is not very.

Admittedly I'm not too surprised by it, in the month of October life has been a very busy and I'm sure that this is my body's way of taking over and declaring an emergency state of rest.  I remember how I would get over particularly long stretches of work at Apple and this month has been longer than any of those.  But the main difference with this is that its easier to convince yourself that you have, in fact, been taking breaks when you've really been working all the time.

Peace Corps really is a 24/7 job and you have to fight to keep yourself from being overtaxed.  Especially with TEFL volunteers it can be easy to stretch yourself; in order to stay motivated in the classroom, I involve myself in other activities I am actually internally motivated to work on. It often happens that the work we must do (teaching in the classrooms) and the work we are passionate about (activities outside of the classrooms) end up taking up all of our time.  And while its good to keep busy, its better to stay healthy.  So I'm excited for November, which I'm looking forward to as a much more relaxed pace.