Ugh.

This morning, my daily personalized mug of hot chocolate sat forgotten on my desk until third period.

That's the only explanation I have that around the same time, I became irritable and cranky, and later, tired. It's NOT PMS, thankyouvery much; I was just impatient and annoyed at the clinginess and neediness of some students and the loudness and brashness of some teachers.

I hate the teacher's lounge. I know it's fairly common for younger teachers to say this, because of the negative energy and disgruntled teachers. Sometimes I need that, it's an effective if not pretty way for us to work off steam about difficult students or impossible parents.

Most of the time, though, it's just loud. Or smelly, from the food being cooked or eaten. Last week, I got halfway into the room before I had to quickly turn and leave again; something nasty was in the microwave and I was near choking at the smell. (I'm a really picky eater, but in no way one of those proselytizing save-the-animals types; I just don't want to eat most things. I am also really sensitive to strong food smells. Like turkey, or fish, or a lot of ethnic cuisine and dishes.)

If there's a class using my room, there's only two rooms for teachers to go to. One of them is occasionally unavailable, but neither are quiet or peaceful. That's why a couple times I go to the dusty, secret book room.

Today, I didn't feel like going all the way up there, so I stayed in the teacher's lounge, but with my discman on and up, to drown out the teachers. I read the Smithsonian magazine that came yesterday. (Did you know that 75% of Saudi Arabians are under 30 years old? Incredible!)

Speaking of food, it's been a big thing this week. I bring things to eat to school: yogurt, a little plastic thing of dry cereal, a granola bar and maybe some cookies. But these things do not do anything to make me not hungry. And after a year and a half of hardly eating at school, apparently my body has had enough! Every day this week I have been way hungry and counting down the time til I could go home and have some real food and feel sated.

I have some new baja ranch dressing, lettuce, cheddar AND pepper jack cheese, chips, and new orange juice, and zesty pickles....easy to see why I can't wait to get home. :)

This afternoon, after eating and checking email and that, I had to actually take a nap for about an hour or so. That really rarely happens, and I don't know what to make of it.

Bleh.

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Today the students finished their findings graphs and charts. As they shared, I asked some questions to get them thinking about WHY they saw what they saw. Not sure if it worked, but I gotta try. Things like, to the class, what can you tell about what they were watching while seeing this type of commercial?

The majority of groups, across all three classes, had the biggest category as food ads. That included candy, cereal, restaurants, all that. Like, way more than toys or electronics or anything. Food-type things, since not much IS actual food.

One group did their classifying as including 'healthy food' and 'unhealthy food.' They called me over yesterday to ask about Coca-Cola. To ASK about Coca-Cola being healthy food! You know what else was on their so-called 'healthy' list? HONEY COMB and GUM.

Good lord. I shook my head in sadness and disbelief. They giggled a lot at that.

Tomorrow, I am very grateful that I am going on a trip with one class. I don't know at this mment how I'd be doing regular teaching stuff.

And next week is only three days with the students. Yes, grateful indeed.

Man, this really is a slumpy time of year for me.