Who is that woman and why is she wearing my shoes?

Now I have to say it's been an interesting year. 371 days ago I said good-bye to a beautiful place that was my home for four years. But I also left behind a life of which I had never imagined myself outside. I was that girl who loved school her whole life. Absolutely loved it. That girl who was happier in Bapst Library than in Mary Ann's bar. Am I where I thought I would be last year? Yes and no. Physically, yes. Every other way, no. Every time I walk into the classroom I think to myself, What are you doing? Who are you pretending to be? When I received my bachelor's degree in literature and philosophy last year did I think I would be spending my days teaching thirty four year old children how to sneeze into their arms instead of my face? Anyone who knows me asks me what am I doing. And generally for a video tape of a day in my classroom.

I spend a lot of time here feeling like I'm living someone else's life- and it's not just the snot wiping, jacket zipping, shoe tying parts of it. That's most of it. It's the big girl job, but it's also the boyfriend, the black tie ball, the nice restaurants, the school concerts, the chaperoning field trips, the going to bed at 9 pm. Everything rolled into one. What's going on here? How did this happen to me? How did I become Daytime Mommy to thirty other people's children when I don't even desire my own? I thought I would be teaching high school. But this year has shown me that I can do this- I can do something I've never done before, that I never thought I would do, and honestly, that I've never wanted to do and never want to do again. After the first week, I wasn't sure how I would make it through the year. I still have that thought every once in a while, like when a child hasn't eaten any lunch for the fifteenth day in a row and I have to tell him that he needs to eat his sandwich so he can become Spiderman. And then tell him to take crocodile bites and actually hold the sandwich to his mouth. (See? Who was she?)

But like it or not, that is my life for the next TWENTY NINE DAYS and then I'm out of KG1B for a much needed two month vacation. Next year I'll be returning but tentatively to first and second grade which is something I'm really looking forward to. After having worked with actual babies, substituting for first and second graders is a dream. You can open your own books? You can write your own names? You can pull up your own pants? (Most of the time anyway.) Sign me up!

Now I will say that I enjoy the job most days and mostly I'm grateful that I have a job in a time when many people I graduated with were not so fortunate to find one. I can pay off my loans, pay my bills, and travel freely. So even though I'm not exactly where I want to be right now, I'm trying to remember that I'm 23 and when you're 23 and the economy sucks (or even when it doesn't) you probably won't be able to do exactly what you want right away. And since I don't know what it is that I actually want anyway, this is ok. Besides, this going to Turkey, Dubai, and India on my term holidays isn't so bad.

PS- On Saturday I was helping Blaine out with the concerts for Grade 3 and 4- just keeping children relatively orderly while waiting for their turn on stage. At the end, many parents came up to thank those of us who were there helping out:
Mom: "Ah thank you so much for helping! It is lovely today! You work here?"
Me: "Thank you, yes, I do. I'm a teacher here as well. I work in the Infants' School."
Mom: "Ahhhhh [speaks in Arabic to her friends] yes we thought you were a student!"

Hint: At the point when I said "Yes, I teach here," you should have stopped that line of conversation and not told me I look like a high schooler. Even though in honesty, 2/3 of the twelfth graders are twice my size in every direction. I'm still kind of mortified that five years after I graduated from high school and a year after I graduated from college, that someone still thought I was a high schooler. That embarrassed me when I was in high school. Ah well. At least she had on great flats.