Wednesday, September 24, 2008

This New Life, This Month

It has been a tough month.

I am lucky to call it that. In the last month I have flown across the country, picked up at the airport by the principal of my new school and taken to the home where a school family would be hosting me. I painted my room my favorite color- much like the one on this blog, and moved in the eight boxes of my favorite things that I had shipped from home. A week and a half of intensive training, lots and lots of talking, and the school year begins. I can teach what I want, move through the school as I want- as do the 50-odd (and I do mean odd) young ones, some about to graduate and some still wetting their pants. I set my own hours and daily agenda, where I am supported and checked-in on and communicated with as much as I could dream of, I am paid almost enough to cover weekly expenses. With school and all the settling in, there is hardly time to explore this beautiful city, to see the half-dozen friends I have here, or to get back to the friends-of-friends who continue to call to welcome me. I apply for one other job to supplement my tiny stipend and I get it! Teaching art and theater after school, this time to all 4th and 5th graders, with me in the front of the room and them having to listen, to walk behind me between classrooms in straight lines, but here too I design my own curriculum (I have not begun yet) and because it is after school and there is no test to take, I am allowed to define my own measures of success.

many people have done these things before:
moved far away from their family
worked a job they wished delighted them, but stresses them out
tried to be a good teacher
given up their automobile
graduated from college
worried that wanting to make art would make them irrelevant
been followed by a partner whose commitment to them scares them, but to whom they feel the same.
Yearned to feel firmly routed, but felt aimless.
built a life, a reality, based on their ideals.


But all of these things are new to me, and they are what I am doing. I have been here one month. Now, I am going to the airport to pick up Kerry, for him to start his new life here and for me, essentially to start over with him. This time, I will articulate what I am learning as I learn it, and I believe this will make me happier, I have realized now that it will be hard.