S. has arrived safely at her hotel in Bangkok.   She called a few minutes after 2 pm here–2 am Tuesday there–indicating that the trip had been long but uneventful and that it felt good to be back in a city she knew so well, doing work she believes in again.  Needless to say, the  news of her arrival thrilled me.  It’s always been difficult for me to relax knowing that she is in transit to the other side of the globe.  But now that she’s arrived, I feel a bit better, less anxious, less preoccupied with fears of plane crashes and other man made disasters.  My baby is safe and I am satisfied accordingly.

However, I’m now worrying about Ralph, the older and larger of our two dogs, who injured his leg this afternoon while running in the yard.  He circled the fence line at high speed and on the curve closest to the gate he yelped and came limping to me on three legs.  He still, several hours later, refuses to put weight on the injured limb and is unable to jump up onto the bed.  I’m having to lift him.

This concerns me especially, since, as a puppy, he was hit by a car and had to have both hips fused back together.    This makes me think he is both more vulnerable to injury and less likely to heal easily.  If he has not improved by morning, I will have to take him to the vet for examination and x-ray.

Now, however, I’m sleepy and ready for bed–ridiculously early, I know.  Hopefully, I’ll awaken refreshed, and unlike Ralph, will not limp through peer review sessions with students tomorrow.

Our Asian adventure is officially launched with S’s departure this morning for Bangkok.  Right now she is in the Detroit to Tokyo leg of the trip–an excruciatingly long flight of more than 13 hours.  Almost two years ago when I flew that route, I remember landing in Tokyo (Narita) with unusually swollen feet from so many hours in the air–feet down, unable to move comfortably around the cabin.  However, all told, the trip to Bangkok takes around 27 hours, from wheels up in Lexington to wheels down in Thailand.  S. will arrive there early Tuesday morning–just after midnight–and will spend 2 days in Bangkok at her NGO’s Asia/Pacific headquarters, before leaving Thursday for Vietnam–a couple of days in Hanoi and then down to Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon).  She will remain in Vietnam until late in the month, when she goes to Jordan for a UN leadership conference on disaster response.

It all sounds exciting, but frankly at the moment I feel miserable and lost, knowing that this chapter in our lives is ending.  However, I’m trying to focus on the positive–the fact that another is beginning–trying to be optimistic.  At the moment though, I feel like I’m in limbo–lost between two worlds–living out this semester until I can join S. is Asia around the first of May.  But basically I’m experiencing an overwhelming sense of dread–two months is a long time apart.  We did six weeks during the tsunami–that’s been our longest separation.

However, I have a wonderful family and friends and students who will occupy me.  My mother returns to the US from Brussels at the end of this month.  I look forward to that.  I only wish she were going to be back in time for my birthday.  Gosh, that sounds childish, but frankly I’m feeling fairly toddler-ish at the moment, trying to get my feet under me and regain my balance.  This whole learning to walk on two legs thing is not all it’s cracked up to be.  I’m like my nephew Reeves, who we feared for a while might crawl down the aisle to his own wedding.  But he has recently learned to get around all too well on two legs–toddling toward two–vertical all the way.

My students’ papers  about problematic places on campus are alerting me to university issues that genuinely concern me–the blatant unfairness of the meal plan all  campus  residents are forced to buy, not to mention the health hazards and abysmal living conditions that are epidemic in the dorms themselves.  And frankly I feel that something must be done, but I don’t know how to even begin addressing the innumerable instances of  disregard for students’ welfare.  I’d like to contact the local news media–the Lexington Herald Leader and, perhaps, channel 18, but suspect I should wait till the end of the semester to do so.  Someone clearly must take action on behalf of these kids.

However, in addition to realizing the university’s culpability in making life difficult for students, I did teach two great classes today–sessions during which we analyzed drafts of essays on overhead projectors.  In both instances the kids suggested that that kind of class activity proved instructive and asked to do more.  In my final class, both students whose papers we were supposed to discuss did not show up for the session.  This unfortunately derailed  each activity I had planned for the hour, so I let students leave early and instead met with a few one on one to discuss progress on their  drafts.  I only hope this interaction  was as helpful as the peer review sessions done earlier in each of my other classes.

At any rate, I’m now too tired to write anything more even remotely interesting, so I’m going to wrap this up and go to bed.  Insomnia is clearly not an issue for me these days–or nights, for that matter.

After spending the day with students in the library, running errands, and fighting with a  moody copy machine in the English Department, I’m tired and struggling with a headache.  I’m more than ready for this week to end.  Fortunately tomorrow is Thursday, my last day of classes till Monday.  Probably I sound pathetic–probably I am pathetic–not to mention irritable and bitchy and so, so sad that S. is leaving  for Asia on Sunday.  It’s going to be a long couple of months.  But thank God for Skype!  Without it I wouldn’t be able to survive the separation.  At least, it allows us to talk for free and even see one another via  web-cam.  So, rather than dwelling on the negative, perhaps, I should be thankful for the technology that will allow us to survive 2 months apart.

However, I don’t have much meaningful stuff to share tonight.  I’m too tired to create or use words inventively.  I need to call this quits and allow this to be my least inspired post to date.  It’s okay, right?  Will you try reading again on another day, when I feel more human and less like a neaderthal near death?

Today S. visited my classes at UK, as she had never seen me teach.  Plus, we realized this week would be her last opportunity to do so for quite some time–for over a year, at the very least.  She leaves for Bangkok and Hanoi on Sunday and won’t return to the US until I come back with her in early June–well after the spring semester has ended.

And although I’ll be beyond sad to see her leave, I thoroughly enjoyed her visit today.  I wanted her to watch me do what I do,  day in and day out, the routine of it all, the mundane details that in their ordinary way take on a charm and beauty of their own.  Plus, I so love what I do.  I revel in each and every student success and feel saddened by their setbacks and defeats.  Certainly, it’s not necessary or even normal to love students as thoroughly as I do.  However, I can’t help myself.  Clearly, I’m doing what I do best, the work I feel most passionate about, the job I enjoy so much, it hardly adds up to labor no matter how you do the math.  No matter the multiplication or division involved, teaching is always worth the effort.  Hopefully I’ll carry my abacus with me into old age and tally students successes for decades to come.

Yesterday I attended a family brunch that allowed my siblings to say goodbye to S. prior to her upcoming departure  for Bangkok and Hanoi this coming Sunday.  We gathered at Furlongs, where most ate eggs Benedict, omelets, or bananas foster French toast.  Because of my ongoing diet, I ordered none of the above, but enjoyed instead a grilled chicken salad with Cajun blue cheese dressing.  I’m learning to resist culinary temptation in social situations–something I feared myself unable to do two months ago.  For at least the first month of my eating and exercising regimen, I refused to enter a restaurant, afraid that I would devour forbidden foods,  fall off the dietary bandwagon  I’d strapped myself to 4 weeks before.  Since then, however, my resolve has intensified.  I’m determined to succeed.  I’m able to touch the forbidden fruit and not partake. 

At any rate, in addition to eating we discussed the benefits of brunch as social gathering– that no one needs to cook and that the event is limited to a couple of hours, at most, allowing one to fulfill other social obligations later in the day.  Plus, brunch is a semi-celebratory occasion.  It makes me feel I’ve done something special, something  “Sunday-ish,” maybe even semi-spiritual, if only in an out-to-lunch kind of way.

However, S. DOES leave on Sunday, which means we WILL be apart for 2 months, 2 months until I can join her in Hanoi at the end of the semester, hopefully during the first few days of May.  I look forward to the Vietnamese adventure itself but certainly not the two months home alone, away from the woman I love.  This coming Sunday will be brunchless, a far from celebratory occasion, as it begins an entirely other deprivation, one that only the arrival of May will satiate–no Cajun blue cheese dressing for me, plenty of blue, perhaps, but no cheese whatsoever on the menu.

Now S. thinks we may be in Hanoi till the Jimmy Carter Work Project ends in November.  Clearly, I am learning to anticipate these kinds of announcements, as I had already mentioned to my mother that I thought this might be the case.  Incidentally, when I spoke with my mom this morning she offered elaborate commentary on Vietnamese politics and the renaming of cities after the war, that I was unable to follow or make sense of–explanations she said had come from my Uncle Paul.  I simply don’t think this could be the case.  My mother either misunderstood what he said or gave him misinformation about where we would be living.  I called her back at one point thinking she must have told my uncle we were going to Korea rather than Vietnam.  You have to know my mother and my uncle to appreciate the humor in this.  However, I suspect she told my uncle we were going to Korea, because in our conversation she kept saying “Korea” instead of “Vietnam.”  Oh, well, no one other than my siblings or cousins could appreciate this comedy of errors that is communication in our family.

As I write this, however, S. is driving back from Atlanta.  Hopefully she’ll be home by 9 o’clock this evening.  She fortunately confused her departure date.  She leaves for Asia a week from Sunday rather than Saturday, which means we’ll have an extra day together.    It feels now like every day matters more than ever.

Today I researched Hanoi–cost of apartments, best district for expat residence, jobs teaching English, and visa renewal policies and procedures.  I have an enormous amount to learn.  I’m even ignorant about the geography of South East Asia, which is not good.

More change is on the way–S.  is still in Atlanta, will return home Friday evening, and leave a week from Saturday for Hanoi, where she will become her NGO’s interim national director for Vietnam.  We had thought the  first stop in our upcoming Asian adventure would be Bangkok, but how quickly things change!  And this could not have been more unexpected!

Our plan prior to this had anticipated S’s taking a series of shorter trips this spring beginning  March 8th, trips that would have  allowed her to return home between assignments to India, Jordan, Indonesia, and Geneva.  Then suddenly late yesterday afternoon this appointment in Vietnam became inevitable.  I suspect I’m adjusting well to the reality that a two month separation is nearly upon us, that is until I can make it to Hanoi myself when the semester ends around the 1st of May.  We don’t expect to settle in Bangkok until later this summer.

Also important is the fact that the chair of the English Department at Oral Roberts University, where I taught in the late 80’s contacted me this week.  This excites me considerably, as it puts me in touch, not only with Bill, but also with my other colleagues from that time.  This is a good thing–a very good thing.

Wow–lots of people read my post yesterday!  This is exciting.  It motivates me to actually invest a bit of energy in improving what I write.  Yeah, here I am the composition  teacher having to motivate herself to write.  Any students who read this can now be assured that I too dread having to put pen to paper sometimes.  It can be a pain in the ass when you just don’t want to be bothered.  And often I sooooo don’t want to be bothered. 

But sometimes my students inspire me to try harder, to do better, to not take the easy way out.  I just received an email from a student who is working on a piece about the most under-renovated classroom on campus, and some of his lines are stunningly funny.  It’s inspiring to watch these kids grow as writers and as human beings.  So many of them have the most amazing souls and truly brilliant minds.  I only wish I could have been as enlightened as they when I was 18 or 19 years old.  I may never have children, but at least I have the honor of watching these almost sons and daughters take deep looks inside themselves and mature into beautiful beings of whom I am most proud!

Wow–I just received what I think might be my first ever student complaint about a grade.  It seems that can’t be the case, but I don’t remember another.  Ironically this upset student received a “B-” on the essay–not easy to achieve on ones first college English paper.  If this person had only had her work graded by many of the other instructors in the department who actually have difficult to achieve standards.  I’m easy from what I hear–maybe not entirely “easy” but certainly not worse than middle of the road in my expectations of students.

At any rate, I met students in the library today, hoping to help them get started on research for this second essay, a first draft of which is due Thursday.  For the most part these sessions went well, and by now–late afternoon–I have even completed my grading for the day.  After I have finished this post, I can spend the rest of the evening reading–a luxury I absolutely adore.

However, I miss S., who just about now should be completing her first day back to work at her new job in Atlanta.  She stays till late Friday afternoon.  Hopefully after that she will be able to office at home until she leaves for India in March.  This is my first taste of her being away for longer than one night since we moved into this house–since her international travel a couple of years ago.  I suspect I’m adjusting fairly well so far.  At the very least I’m able to grade lots of papers without wanting so spend the time with her instead.  This gives me an opportunity to adjust to her absence without feeling overwhelmed by an extended separation.