Traveling on a budget with legs as my gears

1/2 Graduation: Ela, Christian, Isa, Denise, Cassie, me, Darren, Audrey, Enzo, Savina, and Gian (excuse my quick editing)

Friday, May 12, 2017. I had low expectations for the first day of Batch 3 based on my experience from the transition of Batch 1 to Batch 2, but I'm pleased to spend the day knowing I still have kids to teach. There's a decline in the number of enrollees this batch, which makes me miss how busy the first batch was despite it feeling hectic. I had really funny students, namely Thomas and Gabe. Thomas made me laugh when he said, "Wow, I can see lots of good things underwater!" while we were doing bubbles and my rashguard kept on going up, revealing my tummy. I asked him, "What do you mean? What kind of good things?" He gave a really sly smile and said, "Nothing, I was just joking." Funny, animated kid. Then came Gabe, who was extremely afraid of getting water splashed into his face. Even keeping it at chest level was a struggle. I tried to make him face the water and he kept yelling, "I ALMOST DROWNEDEAD, I ALMOST DROWNEDEAD!" (He thinks the past tense for drown is drownedead). "You're fine! And there's no such word as drownedead!" I told him, laughing. Everyone in the class was laughing, even him.

Monday. March 15, 2017. I had my first absent last March 13 because it was my Kuya Mak's wedding, which was held in Lopez, Quezon. I hurried back even when our whole family went to the beach because I didn't want to miss work again, but when we arrived at ESSI (Elizabeth Seton School Imus) today, the pool was a disgusting shade of pee. Classes were canceled and Rich and I were sent to different venues.

Kuya Boyet, the pool boy, was not around to help us deal with the problem.

I got transferred to Island Cove.

It took me an hour to get there from ESSI--it was a good ride but the work there is for 12 hours, from 6:30AM-6:30PM. I am not a super human to withstand a long travel time and half the day stay at the venue so I'm happy to do substitute teaching there at a one-time only basis.


I seized the day by trying all of the slides and swimming in all of the pools.

Wednesday, March 17, 2017. I was absent yesterday (Tuesday) because I got a late text that the pool still isn't fixed so I should go to Island Cove still. I didn't wanna come in late just because I was notified late, so I decided to skip work. Supposedly, I was still gonna have duty at Island Cove today but I really can't take a 12-hour shift. I get scared biking alone at the creeping darkness of the pre-sunrise/night. Plus, it's 22 kilometers away; that's 1 hour and 25 minutes of saddle time from home. Multiply it by 2 (to go there and back), I'll spend 10 minutes shy of 3 hours in transportation. 12 hours plus 3 hours is equals to 15 hours. Let's subtract that to the hours of the day: 24 hours minus 15 hours is 9 hours, which is 1 hour shy the amount of time I spend to rest my 5'5", 130lbs body through sleep. How about the hours I need to get ready for work? Let's squeeze that into one and a half hour and the time I need to prepare my food then eat it. I lost count on my math now but do you get what I mean? I suggested to be at ESSM (Elizabeth Seton School Main) instead, which is actually just 7.7kms away, much nearer than ESSI by about 2kms. I didn't like that I didn't have proper parking there and I thought the head coach was such a bitch, but the pool and the kids were very nice.

I had awesome students. Raya was kind of a highlight because she kept hugging me and even gave me a kiss. And she was like, "Be brave, be brave!" while we're swimming even though she was scared. (There was, however, an incident. Raya and her classmate Clay pulled each other down out of panic then drowned for about 5 seconds while I had my back turned against them). I also liked Miggy, he started out very scared to do back float but we ended the class with him being able to do it without me holding him. There's also Tami, who was hesitant to submerge her head in the water. After our class, blowing bubbles became her favorite thing to do. This kind of work is truly rewarding when you see your purpose being served. It makes you feel useful. Kids made me discover that I have been sitting on such huge love and it's just waiting to be given all this time.

Thursday, March 18, 2017. I was really happy to be back at ESSI. Not only do I miss my students, I felt appreciative of Coach Madel after my encounter with a different superior yesterday. Well, only until she started my supposedly appreciative day with something that could've been handled better had she weighed things more equally. Three days out of our own venue, she starts asking how we were now that we're all back. When she got to me, she started accusing me of not greeting the people at ESSM as soon as I arrived. I hate when I'm judged based on stories heard from others, assuming that certain "complaint" came from the ESSM head coach. It wasn't like that. When I arrived, I said hello to everyone; the head coach wasn't there yet and the rest were lounging so they probably didn't notice or care. When I changed to my slippers, next thing I knew they're huddled up and talking amongst themselves. I was waiting for a chance to greet the head coach as soon as I realized who it was from this group of people I've met just now, but they didn't give me a chance--they continued talking amongst themselves as I stood there. After much waiting, there was finally a pause so I approached the head coach and chatted her up about the students I'm gonna handle. I didn't say hello anymore because she's already seen me; that'll just be weird. I just went straight to casual talk. I didn't think that that would be such a big deal? It is indeed hard to be the new girl. I felt so ostracized and wanted to cry but I fought through it for the sake of the children.

Friday, March 19, 2017. Because of the 3-day downtime due to the pool's malfunctioning filtration system, makeup classes were necessary in order to not go out of the scheduled batches. Mary and Lyka came as relievers today to help us deal with the student load. I'm really having fun mixing my students together when they are in for a 2-hour class; the class just becomes more packed! I was looking forward to my 11AM-12NN class where all of my very good students will be mixed with my other very good students from 10AM-11AM, but just about when I was going to make my kids do drills, Coach Madel interrupted it so Lyka can switch classes with me because Lyka doesn't like the class she got and she saw how polite and obedient my students were. I hate when Coach Madel favors other teachers' requests, just because I stay quiet about my [own student] preferences. She even tried to appease me by saying some half-hearted compliments like, "Mas kaya mo kasi yan. I believe in you." I KNOW THAT I CAN, THAT'S NOT THE ARGUMENT HERE (no actual argument took place). THE ISSUE IS YOU FAVORING OTHERS' REQUESTS AND EVEN INTERRUPTING CLASSES FOR IT. I took the other class, nevertheless. I'm learning so much about self-restraint being surrounded by kids because I don't want them to witness how ugly I can become when I'm mad. I chose to put my best foot forward, and as I said in my previous post, I'm learning to just take things as it is. It's not even like I don't like the class I got switched to. It's just like... adobo and sinigang. You like them both but you got adobo when you were told lunch would be sinigang, y'know what I mean?

Saturday, March 20, 2017. Coach Ad and Jayvee came as relievers today.

Monday, March 22, 2017. The graduation is two days away, I am behind on the diving lesson because the makeup classes screwed the days over so I couldn't incorporate it to all my classes yet. That's why I eat up half the hour on diving + swimming, now that everybody's schedules are for only an hour.

Tuesday, March 23, 2017. I noticed that I developed athlete's foot on my left pinky toe, which is a first for me so I started getting worried. Based on my Google (re)search, it is prominent around public showers and swimming pools. Though I suspect that I got this because I let my socks stay on when I got home all sweaty from my fast-paced commute ride, so the fungus had time to nest on my left pinky toe. Good thing that I spotted it right away; it's gone now. I'll talk about it more graphicly and how I cured it on my next post.

Wednesday, March 24, 2017. There were two graduations today. Both of them went okay, having learned from our mistakes from previous batches' graduations.

2/2 Gradution: Gersella, Thomas, Stephanie, Erin, me, Aliyah, and Rzci

When we ended the program with a dive + swim, I was supposed to cut Rzci's swim in half because we have never done a full lap before but he surprised me because he kept pushing forward until he reached the other side of the wall. I guess that one time we had a one-on-one paid off. (When the others' makeup classes were done, he ended up having no more classmates so my entire focus was on him. We did basic freestyle and some back stroke introduction, then proceeded with diving).

If that wasn't satisfying enough, he gave me kisses before leaving... the chocolate kind... mmmmm!

Thank you, Rzci!

Batch 2 started out weak for me, getting my first tardy of four minutes on the first day, followed by eight minutes the next day, and then one minute the day after that. I have been coughing myself silly every night that it's so hard for me to fall asleep in time, so I get up a little bit later than planned. There's this self-imposed one-peso-per-minute rule by Coach Madel: you have to pay one peso for every minute that you go past the 7:30AM call time. I have not paid a single centavo [yet], and to be honest, I have no intentions of paying for anything from the get-go. I don't bring cash with me anyway unless I know there's gonna be something I'd have to bring money for, otherwise, McDonald's coupons are my main form of currency.