Winter Break, Part 1: Discovering the extent of my flight anxiety

Sorry this is coming so late—I’ve been super busy getting back into school things/have been doing a lot more online work recently. This post will not be terribly informative about my actual break, as I wrote it two Saturdays ago on the cab ride to the hotel in the Canary Islands, but I promise that plenty of pictures/more relevant stories are on the way!

But first, an unnecessary story that we are pretending I posted two weeks ago...

.....

Remember when I went to Israel? Well, to get there, we had to take a gigantic double-decker plane—if I had internet I would’ve looked up its official name and seemed super smart—but for our purposes we’ll just call it the flying titanic.

...Except for regardless of the number of lifeboats on the flying titanic, we would all be utterly screwed by the airborne version of a giant iceberg (Tall mountain in cloudy weather? Bigger-than-usual drone? Whatever. This metaphor needs more time...).

Immediately upon seeing this winged horror, I was not pleased. It was just too big to fly. My anxiety did not improve when we had an hour delay because the plane was too heavy and they needed to take off some luggage. Take me...Take my bag. Just please dear god if you insist on trying to make this thing fly do it with only passengers and no luggage at all...

Anyway, everyone thought I was paranoid and weird. They were right. The flight on the way over was pretty standard.

BUT. Fast-forward to the return flight—on the same plane—where I think I can fairly say we all had the most terrifying turbulence/landing experience of ever. Turbulence in a small plane, or in any reasonable one-level plane for that matter, is not really a big deal. Just kind of like...look at the plane resisting the forces of nature or whatever turbulence is...adorable.

But it doesn’t feel that way on Air-tanic. It feels like a freaking sky earthquake...like an Airquake.

Okay I’m done.

Bad metaphors aside, this more or less destroyed planes for me, so I really wasn’t looking forward to flying to France this past September. However, for whatever reason, it was totally fine. There was no turbulence, no weird landing...just a normal flight with normal reactions from all. Hoorah!

Which brings us to today, when I totally forgot that I had issues with planes. It was especially windy in Madrid, and upon our descent I decided within the first twenty seconds that death was imminent. I tried some deep breathing techniques, which were surprisingly successful...until they weren’t. The Spanish man next to me had just consumed more gross airplane food than I thought possible or recommendable, but I desperately wanted him to just hold my hand or something. I knew everything would feel better if this giant, who seemed anchored to the plane by sheer weight, allowed me to cling to him with a mighty force.

Accept my cling, ACCEPT IT. I inched my open palm toward him as my breathing became increasingly loud and difficult to ignore. Meanwhile, he was doing everything in his power to avoid my frantic gestures and general existence. This was impressive, as I think I was straddling the armrest at some point and eventually lost feeling in my wingers/started wiggling them spastically in front of us both. 

Sometime after all of this, the plane landed entirely without problem, at which point I redeemed my spastic behavior by pushing aside the gentleman in front of me and running off of the plane like an insane person.

There was no time for thinking: I was an hour late for my connecting flight and needed to find the gate while simultaneously making sure that my fingers were still attached to my body.  

I looked at the departure board: Tenerife. 15:00pm. C 48. The farthest terminal from me, and it was already boarding.

Oh...what is that, brain? That plane has a completely different number than the one on your ticket? Irrelevant! Nothing else makes sense but this.  

I sprinted through the airport until I realized people were looking at me like I was on fire. I didn’t even know if I was going in the right direction and something was telling me that I was making a gigantic mistake of some sort, so I looked again at the departure board.

Tenerife...

15:00pm...

Random flight number...

At least one of these things was wrong.

I verified my ticket for the millionth time, which helpfully reminded me that I’ve never heard of Tenerife and was in fact going to Fuerteventura.

Riiight.

So I found my actual gate—it was directly next to the gate of the plane I had just disembarked like a lunatic—and bought a ludicrously expensive coke from the vending machine to reward myself for not missing the plane. It exploded everywhere immediately upon opening. 

I then realized that when it comes to losing my cool, I don’t do it halfway.

Now, one flight and three hours later, I am almost to the hotel. Looking forward to being on dry land, seeing mom, and my bum hole finally fully unclenching. 

......

Will post more trip details/pictures very soon!

Always a Snape, sometimes a Dumbledore

I was waiting to write a post until something interesting happened. Something interesting has—in fact—not happened, but here’s what’s been going on anyway.

Teaching has been going super well. I’ve developed great relationships with the groups that I see every week and am finally starting to remember names/faces/levels of weirdness. The latter item is by far the most important, and my favorite class—unsurprisingly—is also by far the weirdest. I am always delighted by the deranged, absurd thoughts that come out of their mouths and by their expressions of admiration and love. Of course, in the hands of a bunch of weirdos, cute/nice gestures have a tendency to spiral rather quickly into a creepy place. In any case, they are fantastic.

Examples of their awesomeness:

Ex. 1:

I asked them to come up with team names last week when we were playing a Jeopardy-like game. One group named themselves “Rachel’s Army,” which was adorable and basically implied that I am Dumbledore. (Let me have this).

With tears of joy threatening to brim over, I responded: “Well, now I’m definitely going to be biased”

A different group then chimed in: “We change. WE CHANGE...to... to... Lovers of Rachel! No, Rachel’s lovers!”

See how the creepy just kind of happens...

But still. It’s mostly cute.

Ex. 2:

This week I had them create an invention or product that they had to present to the class and convince me to invest in. One group’s product was a prosthetic nose that protected against bad breath and was brilliantly named iSmell.

Another group made an entire line of torture products, which they described rather elaborately. Here’s an excerpt from their presentation:

“Have you ever had problems with neighbors? Here’s the solution! A moo box that plays Yandure’s* laugh to frighten them and turn them into your slaves! Available in pink, blue...for all tastes!”

* A scary animé character with a manic laugh that I was previously unaware of.

“...We also have this beautiful torture chair, made to prevent your terrible neighbor from moving and upsetting you! Available in black metal, steel, and mahogany. Only 50$--cheaper than Ikea!”

I thought offering a torture chair in mahogany wood was great. The criminal who bought that would have class. But also, what teenager knows the word for “mahogany” in a language other than their own, or even in general? In high school I would have thought mahogany was somehow related to Mongols...but it’s possible I was a special case.

“...Now we have a collection of environmentally friendly missiles that are powered with corn and rice growing inside!* Available at 100$ for 10 --10% reduction with a fidelity card!”

*Is this based at all in science or did it just literally come out of nowhere?

They then described the current state of the torture product market. I was both horrified and impressed.

Now, on to a less-than-good-but-still-pretty-hilarious teaching experience. The other week I had one of those classes that is dominated by one obnoxious personality. This type of student always has at least two minions that are equally obnoxious, but you know they would behave if removed from the ringleader. That day, the ringleader wasn’t necessarily doing anything horrible; he was just being as distracting and overall disrespectful as any other day. Luckily, I was in a great mood, so I was able to greatly ignore him and even joke around about his loudness.

Then, I happened to run into the professor of this specific class at lunch and decided to participate in the lunchtime ritual of complaining about how highschoolers are the scourge of the earth. I honestly don’t remember what I said, something like: “I don’t know how to deal with Thomas. He’s loud and disrespectful and his two cronies annoy me too...Darned kids!”

I supposed I’ve received this reaction before, but I was still surprised by how upset the professor was by this news. It’s possible that assistants in the past had discipline issues or maybe they just see me as a baby that needs protecting.

I didn’t remember the minions’ names, so she immediately got out the book of student faces and made me point them out. She kept saying that she was going to verb that I had never heard before them. From the context, I assumed she meant “give them a stern scolding.” I told her that wouldn’t be necessary, but...meh, whatever, do what you have to do...and proceeded to forget about the conversation entirely.

The next day, I discovered that relying on context clues was maybe not the best call when the boys’ very upset primary teacher approached me.

Him: “I heard about the boys and I am so, so sorry about that. That’s simply not acceptable and they know that. I’m so sorry. I’m about to go talk to them and verb I don’t know again and call their parents.”

...Well, that escalated quickly.

Me: “Oh? I mean, it wasn’t that big of a deal...you definitely don’t need to call their parents.”

Teacher: “No. They know better. It’s not acceptable and they know that, really.”

Meanwhile, I’m struggling to even remember what they did that was “not acceptable” during that period in order to justify any of these punishments.

Me: “I mean, they were only a normal amount of disruptive. Really, don’t call their parents yet.”

Teacher: “Are you sure? It’s no problem at all, but I won’t if you think we should save that for a later time. Anyway, they will have to verb I should have looked up regardless.”

Me: “Right...and that means...”

Teacher: “Ah, they come in for a number of hours in the morning on Saturday.”

Ohhhhhhhh. They have a verb for detention. Isn’t detention a big deal? They already spend the majority of their lives at school so I imagine it’s a pretty significant downer.

Me: “Oh. No, you don’t need to do that either. Just talking to them is fine.”

Teacher: “No, no. They are used to it. This is very, very normal for them. It’s weirder if they somehow don’t get in trouble. It’s not a big deal.”

Me: “Well...if you’re sure.”

I didn’t immediately feel like a horrible, sneaky Snape, but then I realized that during that class period I didn’t indicate even slightly that they were being bothersome. I would say I was even actively nice to them due to my good mood. They couldn’t have seen what was about to happen from a zillion miles away.

...But mostly, I found this pretty funny. Also, I think word got around that I’m (accidentally) no longer making empty threats, and the rest of my classes who have been moderately disruptive in the past are now perfectly respectful. I haven’t seen those poor boys since they served their time, but hopefully they would agree that this was all for the greater good. Or...at least my greater good.

Otherwise, Carson has been in the UK since Monday, bringing about several realizations:

1. The recycling bag gets unreasonably heavy (usually Carson takes this down). If I lived alone drinking less or doing more push-ups would be necessary.

2. I will never again live dishwasher-less.

3. I use roughly 95% of the toilet paper.

Also, I miss Carson.

BUT he gets back tonight AND another two week break starts today. Yeeeee! Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!