Omens, omens, omens

I can't figure out if these omens are rising on the winds or blowing in from the seas, or are even potentially riding into view with the Ides of March. Should I have anything to worry about? It seems hard to say at this point. I have heard birds chirruping in the trees lately, but I have also felt the cold wind's sting on my face and hands as I attempt to run through all that blows and attempts to drive me indoors when I know I need to escape my apartment and the school.

I'm currently wondering what my life will look like in six months. I've been begging for an academic positions at the high school all year and none have materialized. Some have appeared, but since our company was overstaffed, they didn't actual make any new hires but rather just transferred people from other schools to fill the jobs. And finally, job postings have come out and I sent in my resume to the superintendent. Writing resumes and applying for jobs is probably one of the things I despise most in the world. Although I have the option to stay on as an ESL teacher, I am not guaranteed an academic position (even thought I'm qualified). The difference between the jobs, you ask? A doubled salary, teaching what I've been trained to teach in University, having my own apartment NOT on campus and having the freedom to participate in a school community the proper way (by living where my friends are). But in the meantime, I wait. I wait to plan my summer, my autumn, my life. Funny how that's become such a major trend for me in the past 2 years. What do these Ides of March bring, I query?

?

On a totally unrelated topic, I sometimes miss vacation because of the fact that I force myself to read. Reading has always been one of my favourite hobbies (you can insert any one of a million nerdy criticisms here), but I absolutely love exploring stories and characters. Going on a trip allows me the time and head space to do just this. During my winter holiday, I ploughed through 4 books altogether and kept the trend going for the first week back in China (by tackling a lofty 5th). But now I can now feel my focus drifting away as my mind fills up with concerns about paragraph marking, term teaching plans, job applications, and the rest of real life that always lingers on the porch as we return from more frivolous times spent experiencing the world. During my trip to SE Asia, I was able to read:

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Pilgrim by Timothy Findlay

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (finished here in China last week... Maggie, how I love you so)

I find that I try to take on more challenging reads with a few classics mixed in since I have the time and energy to dedicate to their subject matter. And I have to say I wasn't disappointed in any of the adventures. I read Cat's Cradle while in Europe the first time, so it was a bit like a flashback read... but it was much different the second time. Oscar Wao was entertaining and well written, but I think I would've appreciated it more if I knew some Spanish (as a bunch of the internal dialogue was in Espanol). Pilgrim, as with all of Findlay's books for me, was great. Dark, but awesome. East of Eden was definitely the most dense and took me a while to plough through, but Steinbeck has this casually rolling sort of rhythm to his writing that isn't pretentious or hard to access... it takes it's time and doesn't hurry anywhere. Extremely quotable, too. And Oryx and Crake is by Margaret Atwood. Enough said. If you know me and my literary tastes at all, you'd know that I'd take Atwood out for a steak in a heartbeat. She may be married and she may be 70 years old, but I've love to chat up that huge, beautiful brain of hers. You may think this strange... but I've come to grips with my fascination for this woman's writing. You'll just have to deal with it.

Otherwise, I'm finding myself buried under a pile of 200 notebooks that I collected from my students over the past few days. I have a lot of marking ahead of me. Now, if I can only find some ambition to match it. Summertime, where are you?

T