Saturday 4th July 2009

6 more days until I head off to Slovakia - to teach english. Or is it 5? Oh the wonders of education follows me wherever I go, it seems to be the only thing where I know what I'm doing without getting to lost. The issue concerning me is the fact that I'm not much of a talker.

I found two letters, each telling me to get to the airport on different days - this isn't good. I still need to start packing for it too, that and have the time for a performance on Tuesday, bidding farewell to my secondary school head on Wednesday and saying my final goodbyes to Josh & co.

I find it quite hard to say my goodbyes, which is why they tend to be inaudible, it hurts, along with my paranoia of never seeing them again.

Being in this moment I can't quite think straight, sorry, I can't carry on with this one for an longer.

Friday 3rd July 2009

A great end to an awkward week, what with an absent teacher, a final farewell moment and a class cut down to size. I liked it, to see how many people would be off to do whatever rather than be in school, with hardly any work to do, it gives me room to wind down a little and soak in all the things covered in lesson.

There's hardly much for me to say here, barely anything's happened that I can't quote on anything nor can I retrieve any thoughts (if any) that came to me earlier on. There's hardly a point to why I'm carrying o with this entry either...

But just to say, it's been a pleasure to experience this day, to be able to lean back and look at the even bigger picture to the big picture I normally see already.

Thursday 2nd July 2009

With only 8 days to go, it feels as if I have been waiting for an entire eternity for this trip to become a near future event. I need to start deciding what I need to take with me, I need to properly plan my lessons too, after missing my Slovak session on Thursday last week I missed out on the oppurtunity to plan them with Adam.

It's been a funny day, as it was for the week, but today especially. <>, a film I never thought I'd get that emotionally attatched to, about WW2, a story of an Italian Jewish caught up in the horrors of The Holocaust. The sight of the pile of dead bodies, still remains vividly clear in my head, haunting me whenever I try to clear my mind, it comes back, again and again, the unnatural positions in which a human body can bend to, the distinct paleness of the skin, the mass of it that amounted in front of Guido, these are the things that need to be shown to people to get them to feel more of the full power of this pain.

That was the theme for me today, all day, was appreciation of things. Not everyone's an absolutist and not everyone is that extrovert. Me for example, I may not react much to many things, no matter how good or bad they are, but I can assure it's overwhelming inside, only used for when I'm on my own, to bask myself in my deeper feelings. Passion - both intense and surreal, to keep me on my track, to drive me to do so many things I've always wanted to do when I was younger. Now beginning to take them up, it's slightly fulfilling, but they are still dreams, never would I get to the stage where I had always hoped to be.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs - where would I be on that? I wouldn't know, a small fraction of everything seems to be filled in, polarised moods I guess. I've written too much, I'll stop now.

Wednesday 1st July 2009

What was meant to be a day of resting for me ended up as an entire day of outings. Like I mentioned before, there hardly comes a day where I can get rest for real. But it was good to escape from the stress that's been with me for the past couple of days, the problem was trying to stay conscious to stay free from any train of thought.

The day was a warm one, getting slightly humid, nearing the atmosphere I had missed for so long, now the yearning grows stronger by the day, as the heat of the sky rises, the sun that was once friendly to the skin, now menacing to the burns. I quite like it, it takes me beck to the times where the summer here was like Christmas in HK, where I used to complain about how could it gets at night and why the air conditioning was still on.

I didn't understand, how could I? I was four, I knew nothing, I wasn't knowledgeable, I wasn't theoretical, I just sat through time until I grew up to be capable of tackling such things. I've been somparing myself lately, to how I was about a decade ago, to see where I've stepped forward, to where I've stepped back. My attributes are on balances, one increases, the other decreases, it's come to me that I can never maximise the two opposites, I should really start on giving some things up.

But I don't want to, I like the things I do, so many things I'd like to keep, I little I want to throw away...