I'm going away for a few days, leaving right after school on Wednesday and coming back Sunday around dinnertime. So I won't be posting or reading while I'm gone, though I'll probably be writing (with **gasp** paper). I'll miss you!
But here's what I'm doing, and it's a very good thing. I'm going along as a chaperone on the Senior Class Trip. I've done this before, I think four times; I get to go every so often because a) the long-term senior class advisor is a friend, and I keep all the lists, etc. for the trip for him every year, since he can teach a dozen programming languages but doesn't know what Excel is for, and b) his co-advisor since last year is my former co-advisor for the Junior Class for 15 years, and is my total best buddy at work, whom I call here Chum, even though I've never really written a whole entry about her. I will, I will.
So, it's an eight-hour bus trip each way into the heart of Virginia with four busloads -- that's about 180 -- high school seniors just short of graduation. Doesn't that sound like fun?
Well, it is, it totally is. It's the best thing a teacher in this school can get in on. Because:
- It's gets us the hell out of the school building, which, I may have mentioned, is ruled by a cruel tyrant.
- It's kind of like a vacation, except for the having to watch over 180 kids part.
- Back at school, no one really knows how incredibly well-behaved and delightful the kids are on this trip. It's the best kept secret. Everywhere we go down there, we see other schools' kids acting like monkeys in the zoo, and strangers stop and tell us how lovely our kids are. We don't know why, but it happens every year.
- It costs us as faculty nothing to go, all expenses paid, unless we want to pick up snacks here and there. All meals, admissions, hotel, paid for.
- While I'm gone, there's no laundry or dishes to do, errands to run, whining to listen to, responsbilities. (Except the 180 kids, who are easier to manage than my two, some of the time.)
- And now -- get this, my sister can never get over this part -- I get paid extra for doing this, because I'm working nights and a weekend over and above my regular work, which would only be Thursday and Friday. It's in the contract. They don't know that we would probably do it for free.
Except for the part about not getting near a computer for the four days, there's not a damn thing wrong with it. And really, I think I can survive the separation anxiety. It'll probably be good for me.
I'm off to pack now.
Ha, lie, lie, I lied to you! I've been packed for weeks; I was just pretending to be a normal person who packs for a trip the night before. I do have to go re-arrange the stuff in my carry-on, pack the meds and make-up, and generally obsess over this for the last time. Travelling is really the perfect exercise for an anal control freak, or, as Sibs mentioned the other day, someone with "control issues." She asked me the next day if I had been upset by her saying that. I told her no, I wouldn't be upset if she mentioned that I had brown hair, either.
See you Sunday night!
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I'm watching Friends
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