Nearly 24 hours of sleep and I still feel like I’m going to fall over if I stand up for too long. Can’t call into work as there is an emergency involving a special placement program that the parents are bugging out over — we have to give interviews with the native speaking English teacher, and I’ll have to grade several essays by the end of the day, so that the parents can’t argue (they don’t trust the Korean teachers’ English, at least so long as the Korean teachers aren’t ranking their child first), but then I think I might do what I really try to avoid doing, which is palm my classes off and either spend the day in the nurse’s office, teachers’ rest room or see if I can’t just come home. I don’t think five classes of standing and shouting are going to happen.
I hate doing this. It makes me feel like a jerk who can’t hang with my Korean coworkers. But I don’t know what else to do. I might actually end up in the hospital if I try to “endure”. Bless my coworkers for always being understanding, though.
I’m in the same boat right now. I woke up this morning with some awful, disgusting stomach thing going on. I feel tired and weak and cold and feverish and just want to go home. I don’t have classes until 10:20, so I’m really, really trying to hold out because it’s speaking test week. But I don’t know if I can. I haven’t been able to just sit and stay at my desk for the normal 50-minute duration of classes. I feel like a jerk as well because I know my kids have prepared for their tests, and I’m the one who grades them. So they’ll either have to delay or I’ll have to pawn my grading off on my co-teachers.
I’ve clearly been in Korea for too long.
