Insomnia
If you notice that my entries are more spread out, then that is because my life is pretty much occupied. Intensives are ridiculous. I have heard of some people who have it worse than I do (majorly extended days) but compared to my regular schedule it is pretty horrendous.
I have failed to adequately mention my new school. Each Friday I eat a rushed dinner and am outside waiting for a school bus to pick me up at 6:45pm. I would have mentioned that it has been freezing here (it has) but given that temps at home are reading somewhere around -20f with a wind-chill in the -50’s with a good 4 feet of snow I will save it.
Anyway, I get on the bus full of kids try to squeeze my legs into the seat. There is a TV on the bus which is good because nobody talks to me. This does not change when I have them in class, either.
So, I walk up a couple of flights of stairs with a bunch of kids (late middle school - early high school) until I come to Albert’s other school. The way you can tell if a school is Albert’s is that they seem to always have his face staring at you somewhere on the walls. In my school there is an enormous charectiature of Albert and Kim Hak Su; I imagine that soon Kim will be painted over. At his middle school, a TV is playing his old TV series. In it he has spiked hair and an orange dress shirt. You can’t hear what he is saying (he is usually overpowered by Korean Spongebob on the TV next to him) but he seems to be shouting it at the camera like a smiling maniac. Sometimes he claps his hands. I asked Albert if he is famous, once. He told me that the channel went bankrupt shortly after his program began to air.
At this class I teach a couple of 45 minute classes. They are meant to be conversation classes. The format, until a couple of weeks ago, was to read a quick article about something and then ask the students questions about the article. There are around 30 kids in the bigger of the two classes so I have to make sure there is enough depth to the article without it being too hard. Every week I tell them and Hae Jin, who sits off to the side, yells at them, to answer in full sentences. This never happens.
Recently we switched the format so that we would read the article and then I would ask them questions semi-related to the article. For example, An article about a zoo might warrant something like “What is your favorite animal? Why? Do you like zoos? Why?” etc. Of course, you have to have several alternate sets of questions for the jerks who say they hate everything to get out of answering.
Frankly, we realize reading the actual article is pretty pointless but it eats time. I can sympathize with these kids not wanting to talk, but I become hyper aware of myself standing in front of them when everyone is staring at me silently. Generally, I have to try to explain the vocabulary in simple English and I look and sound like a babbling moron. It is basically a bad 45 minute speech class every week. Also a couple of kids routinely fall asleep.
So, this Friday we are switching to free conversation because even I am bored. It will probably be a nightmare, but oh well.
The past few weeks I have not been feeling too well. I have felt run down. Emotionally, I am happy and chipper an all that but I have been fatigued. My sleeping schedule has been off. Part of this is because I feel no need to go to sleep at a decent hour when I can just wake up at 12:45 and go to school.
So, basically, that is what I have been doing. At night I either write, read, watch TV or work on a website I am making. Some days I am up until 3 or 4am without even thinking about it. Of course, the next day I wake up dead and the thought of waking up with a little extra time does not even cross my mind.
I have also had some moderate insomnia here. It has been pretty consistent but it was nothing that really bothered me too much. I would just lay on my floor mat and stare at the ceiling until 6 or 7am and then fall asleep until I had to go to school.
Not counting insomnia I can’t explain, I basically destroyed my internal clock every weekend. Friday and Saturday are pretty consistently long nights at the bar or the hookah lounge or elsewhere. So, two consecutive nights of going to sleep at 4 or 5am pretty much cancel out any hope of sleeping on Sunday nights.
Anyway, like I said, the past few weeks have been rough as far as maintaining a decent energy level. I couldn’t tell if I was burning myself out by staying up so late and then sleeping so late, whether it was school, or all of this extra stuff I am trying to do and figure out (money / writing / website / Russia / etc).
Anyway, last week I woke up and felt off. I felt crappy enough to call into work and spend the day laying around like a vegetable who is pretty awesome at video games.
When a class of kids came by to visit me / steal my food and I had to hide old beer cans in my freezer you would think that one solution was pretty obvious, anyway.
Since then, my sleep has been way off. With that my ambition went away too. I guess I shouldn’t blame my writing consistency on being too busy, so much as being burnt out. Last Sunday night I laid down to bed and didn’t sleep. It wasn’t an issue of falling asleep at 8 or 9am- I just never fell asleep.
I went to school and managed to function.
I had mentioned my problems sleeping before and Han brought me to the hospital to get some medication to help me sleep. I went home that night with 15 white tablets with no label whatsoever.
Being that I was exhausted I didn’t bother taking one. Also, I don’t like taking pills that I don’t know. Hell, the doctor could be waiting outside waiting for me to eat his roofie.
At 4 am I realized I was screwed. I wasn’t going to suck it up and take a pill and be groggy and hung-over all day. So, I sat there waiting to fall asleep until my alarm went off and told me that Tuesday was going to be an epic sort of horrible day.
I do not recommend teaching 11 classes back to back after close to 72 hours with no sleep.
Eventually I found the name of the pharmaceutical company and figured out that I had been prescribed Ambien. This wasn’t really easy given that pill imprints from asian pharmaceuticals aren’t really categorized on English sites.
So, last night I took one. After watching a pile of close pulsate and my mini Christmas tree thickenning and thinning for a while, I fell asleep. Ambien is awesome.