ilubmoney

I think it's about time for a general updates post. Don't think I've done a public one in awhile.

Also, I'm guessing that the appeal of Twitter is that it's not as labor-intensive as blogging. I don't "tweet," but I do regular Facebook status updates.

Work
Some of you know that my school-based internship suffered from the recent round of budget cuts, and as a result, the counseling intern program in my district was cut. However, due to an unbelievable stroke of luck, I was able to secure a new internship in another school district close by. I'm still looking for other part-time work, though, especially to fill in the summer hours. It doesn't help that Kaplan recently decided to close their Score! centers, so tutoring hours have been slashed significantly. I've chosen to transfer to their new in-home tutoring program, but without the guarantee of hours, I have to keep looking for other part-time work.

Quite frankly, I'm feeling burnt-out from having to continually job-hunt almost every year. Girl's got bills to pay, though.

Personal
* Friends know about this already, but I recently started dating someone new. I'm not ready to write about Albert in a public entry just yet, but I can say that I am really happy. I've updated my LJ privately on a regular, daily basis, but since I started dating him, even those private entries have slowed down quite a bit. I laugh a lot more than I used to.
* I've been eating out quite a bit. In fact, I think I should probably Yelp more so I can track how often I'm trying new restaurants as part of my New Year's resolutions. I'm pretty sure I've exceeded 1 new restaurant every 2 weeks. Seems like it's more like (at least) 4-5 new restaurants each month for the past two months. I think I should adjust my goals to cooking new dishes once every 1-2 weeks.

Funny business
On a semi-related note, here are some links that made me laugh:
Luigi finally confronts Mario
How much do YOU love noodles?
Pete Johansson - Epileptic Girlfriend

I've been meaning to read a number of books, and recently I've come across a large number of psychology texts as ebooks/PDFs. (Woot!) Mostly I'm looking forward to reading Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl, but here's a short list of other ebooks on my laptop that seem intriguing:

• Madness: A Brief History by Roy Porter


• Beginner's Guide to Quantum Psychology by Stephen H. Wolinsky (WTH is "quantum psychology?" Guess I'll find out soon!)


• The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders edited by Jerrold M. Post, MD


• 101 Healing Stories for Children and Teens Using Metaphors in Therapy by George W. Burns


• Feeling Good The New Mood Therapy by David Burns (NOTE: this is the most highly recommended book for healing from depression, so if you're interested in taking a look at this, email me, and I'll send you a copy. I'm just putting this out there because I know it's a tough time of year for a lot of people.)


• Criminal Psychology by Hans Gross

There are more that aren't listed, but like 101 Healing Stories for Children and Teens, it's mostly out of professional interest than personal interest.

I've left my LJ in a state of nearly complete privacy. So I'll start with some general updates for you interested parties.

Work

• For those that don't know--most of you, probably--I'm currently working 3 jobs. One is for the money, one is for the love of the job, and one is a combination of both. The less I like it, the more I get paid. :P


• If you're wondering how the counseling gig is going, things are going better. And by better, I mean that I'm getting more cases and more experience. I recently bought the book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. It's a good resource for parents and for those working with parents. I'm considering buying a few cheap, used copies online to give away to parents whom I think would read them and would benefit from them.


• Also, because of the counseling job, I am both pleased and slightly surprised that my graduate education is put to good use. I'm finding myself pulling out textbooks and old notes as resources.

Holidays

• Had a great Thanksgiving weekend. It was low-key and involved a memorable dinner party with a Jon Troast performance. It also involved a new haircut (not a great photo, but a better one to come) and a pretty, red trenchcoat I decided to buy at the encouragement of my more fashionable sister.


• My family put up our Christmas tree. I don't remember if I mentioned this in a previous entry, but our special family tradition is that each of us gets a new ornament each year. This being said, I'll have my 25th ornament this year, and Jenny will have her 6th ornament this year. She was very sad that she had the fewest ornaments out of all of us, and we have way too many ornaments anyway, so my parents made a new rule that we'd only hang up 5 ornaments each on the tree this year. Aside from our ornaments, the only other things we have up are the lights and the angel at the top. I like it. I'm pretty sure it could qualify as a Hallmark commercial seeing as how all the ornaments are strictly Hallmark.


• I'm looking forward to a lot of holiday things coming up. There's the ski trip in Tahoe in a couple of weekends, which I almost couldn't go to because I thought I couldn't afford it. There's also the holiday events around the South Bay that I want to check out. Downtown SJ has what looks like a Christmas festival, so I want to check that out this weekend if I can.


• Due to the slimming of expenses, I'm only buying gifts for family this year. I might do cards, though.


• For those of you sending Christmas cards and who happen to ahve my new address, please don't send me anything. I'm having trouble receiving my snail mail and am working to get that fixed, but please don't send anything til then. Or send it to my Torrance address (email me for it).

Personal

• Things with MF and I have been fine, as usual. I can't wait til he comes home later this month so I can show him a bunch of new, local discoveries.


• One place I wanted to check out with him is uWink, a "social entertainment restaurant." It's a restaurant that has various computer games at the table; you can even play group games with/against other tables. Sounds like fun if you ask me. Plus I'm told it's a good first date place. For those in the LA area, there's one in Hollywood, and up here, it's in Mountain View.


• Some of you may or may not know that I'm going to my own personal counseling. It's just general good practice for therapists/counselors to have their own counseling, and not to promote the profession so much as it's to take care of ourselves and help us keep ourselves in check for work. For me, I have some concrete goals that I'm working on in therapy, all of which will be part of my 2009 resolutions. One is making friends with girls. I'd just like more female friends.


• I love playing pool, and I like going to Shirley's pool mixers for this reason, but I really, really dislike being flirted with by various guys there. I've considered buying myself a silver band to wear on my left ring finger to signal to them that I'm not available. MF thinks this is an unusual thing to do (I think he explicitly said "crazy"). I don't think this is that odd, but I do think it's kind of lame that I'd buy myself a ring to do it instead of MF getting me one. Think it matters? I'll probably just keep an eye out for a silver ring. I think I wear size 5 or 5.5 (can someone drop hints to MF for me? he doesn't read my LJ :P).

I think that's all for now. Is there anything else I'm missing?

I took a few career assessments for my career counseling class, and according to these tests, I should've gone into accounting and taxes. Huh, funny that. I could probably be good at it, but accounting & taxes just don't seem like interesting work to me.

Good thing I also scored highly on counseling & helping as well. But counseling & helping was only #3 on my Strong Interest Inventory; #2 was writing and mass communication. I guess that's what my blog's for!

These career assessments are pretty fun to take, though. I wish I had taken them in high school; it'd be interesting to see what path my life would've taken if I had known then what I know now about myself. I mean, I *was* Miss iLUBmoney back then, too, so maybe I would have ended up in accounting if I was pushed into it just a bit more. Still, I think I would've longed for something more meaningful and interesting eventually.

I've seen this weird trend among my classmates and professors in which an unusual number of us have significant others who are either lawyers or are in law school.

Similarly, I've heard that many teachers have spouses or partners who tend to be scientists or engineers.

Have any of you guys noticed this? Or similar trends? I'm trying to find actual data on this, but my Google-fu is failing me at the moment.

Things have been good lately in various areas of my life, seems like. Maybe it's because USF is on spring break this week. No, I haven't gone anywhere or done anything out of the ordinary this week because I still have work and traineeship, but it feels so good to have space to relax.

Work
Getting the raise about a month ago really helped ease things quite a bit. I left Tutor.com as a result--I had a lot of good moments helping students online, but it was getting to be too much on top of what I'm already taking on this year. The current pay rate is also going to help me get through internship as much as possible, which brings me to...

Counseling
I had a quarter-life crisis moment back in January that I shared with very few individuals. I seriously considered switching careers because of the level of overwhelm I was experiencing in my Master's program. Actually, to be honest, I even seriously considered and applied for SJSU's library science program... yes, that sexy librarian talk was alluding to that. But mostly, the application was motivated by fear more than desire. By the time I got my acceptance letter in the mail, I had resolved some of my hangups about counseling and decided to continue down this career path. There's such a huge diversity and richness to the counseling career, and I would be making a mistake not to explore that further. At the very least, this career's guaranteed to be interesting (hopefully in a good way!).

Anyway, cross your fingers for me. I had an interview last week with a school district. It's in the city I want to move to, it's paid (not high-paying, but most MFT internships are unpaid), it's more of what I'm doing now, and the supervisor seems awesome.

Family
My family's doing well. I mentioned in a previous post that one of my cousins is getting married in April and is having a Catholic-Buddhist wedding, so that should be interesting. Mom's promised to take notes for me since I can't be there.

Baby Jenny is no longer a baby. It's kind of hard to see her growing into the elementary school ageset. She's outgrown her cuteness, but I'm always so amazed at how smart she is. It won't be long before she grows into the "awkward age"... Cathy is in that right now, going into middle school soon.

My family's visiting in May to see me walk. My brothers and I don't care much for graduation ceremonies, but my parents wanted to see at least one of us walk, and it being (presumably) my last degree, they asked that I sign up. So I did. It's a great excuse to have a fun, family day in SF.

Friends
Due to my busy schedule, I've felt disconnected from a number of my friends. This week has been my chance to reconnect with a few, and what timing! None of them know each other, and yet it seems like everyone is trying something (or someone!) new. Unfortunately, some of those resulted in heartache. I hope everyone gets a chance to heal and transition to better times in their lives.

Love
MF and I started this thing a few months ago in which I would let him know when my PMS week was, particularly when I'd have a hypersensitive moment. He's been so receptive and sensitive to this, and I've also been much better at letting him know what I need from him.

Recently, I thought about the time when we were just friends and how he had seemed the sort of person I would never date but become good friends with. How things change! The commitment really started to settle fully when I began visiting his sister's family in January; the positive relationship with his family members really helped to deepen my love for him in ways I hadn't experienced before.

Glasses/Contacts
I had my eye exam. Dr. Lem was very nice and didn't try to talk me into buying anything. Actually, he confirmed that contacts have no benefit of vision preservation and said contacts were really for convenience and cosmetic reasons. He also added that since I have a slight astigmatism, he'd have to special order contacts for that which are more expensive. So I decided to stick with glasses.

I didn't get any from his store since they didn't have frames I felt strongly about. I'm going to try ordering them online, but measuring the pupillary distance (PD) is going to be awkward. Eric recommended Optical4Less. Anyone have recommendations or tips on ordering glasses online?

Misc
Oh, for fun recently, I've been apartment-hunting in the south bay for an affordable studio. It's just helps with the whole "positive thoughts/energy towards the future" thing.

Also, I've been doing some research for cheap summer vacations. MF and I may be taking a trip with some other friends, but from the sounds of their summer plans, it might end up being just the two of us (and we're both very okay with that!). Caveat is that it's gotta be $300 or less per person. Someone suggested camping, but here's how that conversation with MF went down:

MF: "Yeah, that sounds like fun. Let's rent a cabin! Last time I went with my family, we got this cabin that had cable TV..."
Me: "MF! Seriously! I'm not against indoor plumbing and showering, but cable TV?! That's not real camping!"
MF: "Okay, Phuong, YOUR kind of camping--the kind with dirt--is the kind I don't like."

Um... no.

I liked the idea of going to Mexico or Hawaii, but it's beyond our budget. Taking a California cruise would be fun, too, but also beyond our budget. Oh, beach camping could be--bleh, nevermind. >:( Someone else also suggested a B&B, which could be pretty awesome. Maybe we'll finally do that drive down the 1. If you guys have ideas or recommendations for cheap vacations, that would be great, too.


Hope you're are doing well!

I know haven't said much about counseling publicly here. The biggest reason is really because school and traineeship have been huge stress factors, so when I get the chance to blog, I spend that time focusing on non-counseling-related things as a respite. But I'd like to take the time now to say a couple of things about counseling.

First, I had some serious misconceptions about what counseling would be like or what it was about when I first started my grad program. One big misconception was that therapists are advice-givers. While they certainly can give advice, practitioners are supposed to abstain from advice-giving because the goal ultimately is to have the client self-manage. (How to get clients to manage themselves depends on your theoretical orientation, of course.) Besides, just because someone gives you advice doesn't mean you're gonna take it, no matter how well-intentioned or how much empirical support there is for some decisions. Which is fine, because life paths go differently for everyone.

So what are they supposed to do? I asked. Therapists are really just here to listen and help you get through the process of decision-making, feeling, etc. Once you make some kind of decision to change something in your life, therapists can help train you behaviorally to achieve your goal, whether it's to communicate more assertively or to manage addiction, anger, stress.

For therapists, there's the issue of having to overcome therapy's stigma as "the thing for crazy people" or "dysfunctional families." I think we're all a little dysfunctional in some ways, and the kinds of techniques available for remedying our little dysfunctions are not difficult to learn... they just take time to practice and apply.

Well, I guess that assumes that you're not severely dysfunctional. But as my supervisor likes to say, I am more interested in working with ordinary people experiencing extraordinary events.

It took a long time for me to accept the idea that we can't "fix" people. Rationally, it makes sense, but I needed time to buy into the idea, that there will be many times when I will want to help magically make problems disappear for clients, but the best I can do is to just be there for them. And it's not easy to be present with the client when they're going through a really difficult time, because while I'm there with them, I end up suffering along with them as well, if only a fraction of what they're suffering through.

During the times I am able to help, I'm almost always surprised at how it all works out. A good example of this is the use of rapport and the therapeutic relationship. For a kid who's got issues with stable adult/caregiver relationships, having a caring, stable adult whom they see on a regular basis gives them:
1) self-worth, seeing that someone else cares about their success,
2) a model of healthy relationships for the future,
3) the space in which to air out their grievances, even if it seems as though nothing can be done about it.

The third point there sometimes--well, more than just sometimes--makes me feel as though I'm not actually doing anything with the client. But then I think about my own experience as a client and how valuable that 50-minute period is with someone who's actively listening to me. And I've learned that, generally, the more you're able to talk about a painful experience, the more the pain loses its power over you. Sort of like a very simple kind of desensitization, really.

Anyway! This entry got longer than I intended it to be. But I'll just sum up the rest by saying this: I had a very big moment of career identity crisis in mid-January, and the events from last week and this week has made that dissipate somewhat. There's still a big question mark looming in the future about where I'll be or what I'll do after graduation, but I hope I still stay connected to mental health, whether as a volunteer or as a clinician.

I'm pretty exhausted. I woke up at 6:00am to get ready and get to my school site, then as soon as that was over at 3:00pm, I had to drive back up to the city to get to my last 5-hour class. Just got home a short while ago, and now I have some work to finish up before bed. I may just barely be able to squeeze in 7 hours of sleep. (I think I've been averaging close to 6 hours of sleep each night, and I really do need 8 hours to feel fully functional during the day. I was so jittery!)

Funnily enough, I still squeezed in some time for Texas Hold'em on Facebook--during the dinner break for class. Sorry about leaving abruptly, Demmie & Rob; my professor decided to sit next to me as soon as the dinner break was over. :(

Day's still not over. Gotta finish some non-school-related work still. God, how am I gonna find time to apply to internships? :(

In class today, I could totally relate to B's comment about being in survival mode for the last 3 months and not feeling this whole therapy career if it's going to be anything like the last 3 months.

In the past month or so (about 2 or 3 months), I would say that on most days, there's at least one moment where I feel like crying. In fact, I probably cry about once a week on average. It's not so much from having to deal with other people's ridiculously huge problems (although there are a few times in which I've cried from that, too... not in front of them, of course), but it's from the sheer stress of having so much going on at once.

I had a 4-5 page paper due today that I put off doing for 3 weeks now and just finished this morning. It was a reflection paper on our transition as therapists, and I had to be honest at the end of it and say, "I don't know if this is the right career path for me. I don't know if I can handle it or would be happy doing this if this is what it's going to be like." And from our class discussion today, it sounds like this is a fairly normal reaction. I think we're fortunate that counseling specialties can take on so many forms, though, and I still have a lot of different areas to explore beyond school-based family counseling.

(I wouldn't work with severely emotionally disturbed kids, though. I can barely handle it as a volunteer, being yelled at or getting pencils/papers thrown at me for trying to give a 10-word spelling test.)

All I know is that these days, when I have time to stop and think about things, all I want to do is read for fun (thank God for Marvels!... and by "God," I guess that would mean Rob and Demmie in this case), watch movies, and cook food.

I gotta get ready for my next and last class (for the semester!) which starts in 5 minutes. Maybe I'll elaborate a little more when I get back from class.

Just in case you're wondering what's going on with my life recently, here's an update. It's sort of a way for me to organize what's going on, but it's also a chance for you guys to know in case I haven't been commenting/posting much.

The most major thing that's going on with me at this point in time is my counseling traineeship. I have a regular client caseload now, and they range from the fairly mild behavioral issues to much more complex cases that ALWAYS involve complicated family situations and personalities. Fortunately, there's a lot of traineeship support through school and the school-based counseling program, so there's are lots of opportunities to discuss cases and how to approach therapy with clients.

I mentioned before that I'm volunteering at a school center on Mondays, but what I didn't mention is that it's a program specifically designed for severely emotionally disturbed children. It's a very nice program, but at this point, I know I don't want to work with this population. I liked how one of my supervisors phrased our work: "It's working with ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances." SED kids are not just ordinary folks, period. But huge props for the people who can and do work with them.

Getting my feet wet in the mental health area for the first time has been very emotionally complex as well. I was very surprised to learn how closely tied my cultural issues are to other areas of my life, and seeing that tied to my professional life has been disconcerting.

Professional development aside, the financial toll it's taken has made my social life suffer a little. They're not paying me for the 20 hours a week I'm spending on my traineeship, so to make my rent and bills, I'm trying to pull in extra shifts from research and tutoring, and many times, the only time I can fit the extra time in for work is on the weekends. I've still made time to see my friends, but the decision always seems to hurt in some way; if I choose to stay in to work, I feel disconnected from my personal life, and if I choose to go out with friends, I worry about what I have to cut back financially in order to be with them (but I don't let myself think about that while I'm with said friends). Fortunately, they're all very understanding people, and I've been able to touch base with them every few weeks or so.

My love life in the midst of this has been thriving. MF is experiencing equally frustrating issues with law school and professional development, so we've grown closer as a result of being at the same place in life and being able to better empathize with each other. The new level of emotional closeness has really the physical distance so much less important now. Growth really does happen during conflict, and in an indirect way, we've grown.

My family seems to be doing generally well, and catching up with my parents or sisters on the phone always makes me feel a little sad that I can't be there to help. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the relationship I have with my dad and my teenage sister, but that's probably best in its own separate post.

That's about all the time I have to post right now. I'd like to put up a poll at some point when I have time, but no promises. :)

---

Edit: Also, I should mention that I've learned some amazing things--about people and about myself--from therapy and psychology classes. I'm pretty skeptical when it comes to just reading theory, but seeing them applied in real life and actually work seems almost like magic.

This week, I helped a little girl stand up to a bully. Best thing ever. :)

After a full day of observations, introductions, informal interviews, and seeing one client...

... all I gotta say is, I've got at least one crazy story already, but I can't really tell anybody about it, much less blog about it. Thank goodness we have 5.5 hours of traineeship support each week.

One thing I can say is this: there are definitely lots of potential clients here to easily fulfill my 400+ hour requirement for graduation, but the tricky part is getting parents on board. And, oh GOD, the paperwork. There's so much paperwork.

I'm working at a lovely little elementary school just south of San Francisco. Today's my second official day here, and I'm trying to establish my presence here at the school so that the kids will get used to me and not feel so weirded out by having me here. The faculty and staff have been really supportive. I share an office with another counselor who comes in one day a week (on a day I'm not there), so when I come in for the day, it's "my" office. :)

I'm going to bring in a few supplies here when I get the chance, things like stickers, maybe a Nerf ball, a few age-appropriate games to put clients at ease and even help "calm" the more hyperactive kids. I'll be in LA for the weekend in a few weeks, so I'll try and see if there are any old toys Jenny and Cathy don't want anymore.

I'll be seeing my first client next week. I'm pretty excited and nervous! There's a book that was required in one of my classes last spring called "What to Do and How to Ask," which is an excellent resource for this first and future interviews. I'll brush up on the chapter about a first interview with a child client. As to the client, it doesn't sound like a severe case, so I'm glad to be easing into counseling with this client.

I spent the first day introducing myself to a few of the classes and explaining what counseling was to the younger classes ("If someone or something is bothering you, and you need someone to talk to about it, you can come talk to me."). In the second grade class, one kid raised his hand and asked, "What if you had a problem? Who do you go talk to?" Aww! A lot of the boys in that class ended up raising their hands to tell me about their playground woes right there in the Q&A. The older classes seemed pretty jaded, but they know what's up with counseling.

A lot of this work involves paperwork. I've spent most of the morning getting paperwork and notes squared away. Classroom observation is on my to-do list, but I'm really hesitant to do that because I know that just being there will distract kids even more from the lesson and would affect the whole observation process anyway.

I gotta make my rounds in 20 minutes. Later.

I mentioned a traineeship interview earlier this month that rocked. Since the interviewer said that contracts would be sent out at the end of the month, I was very nervous this week because I hadn't heard anything yet. So I called and left a message Thursday afternoon to inquire. I would've been very disappointed if my very awesome interview yielded a rejection.

But I just got a voicemail this morning from the interviewer saying that the contract's in the mail. xD

I'll feel a lot more secure when I see the paperwork in the mail, but for now, I'm relieved that I don't have to seek out new traineeship sites for another round of applications.

More details about the traineeship to come in a future post, after all the paperwork's settled. But I'm very excited. I'll be placed at a school site somewhere in the Bay (hopefully in SF or close to it) and will be working with students on a variety of issues like family issues (e.g. effects of divorce), depression, bullying/fighting (cyberbullying in particular is becoming a serious problem), possibly even eating disorders if it's a middle school site (I remember a girl in middle school taking diet pills). Lots of client contact to fulfill my graduation and licensure requirements, but also lots of flexibility in terms of controlling my caseload. And I've no doubt that it'll be very interesting work. :)

Oh, and no, it's not a paid position, but most agencies don't pay their trainees. However, depending on the site, there is a potential for a full-time job after graduation. This is a huge plus.

Anyone looking for a way to make a little extra cash? It's really not much, but if you've got a few hours in the evening, a computer, and a dedicated broadband connection, you could be a tutor.

The upsides: it's geographically convenient (great for me since I'm out and about) and it's super flexible in terms of scheduling (you schedule any available hours you want the week prior).

The downsides (because I have to be honest): if you already spend too much time on the computer, online tutoring will just make you sick of it; the pay as a probationary tutor is not high ($8/hr, which increases to $10/hr after you pass probationary status, a pay that's better for high school/undergrad tutors).

The mixed: the students--you get a large variety of students, in grade level, typing ettiquette, and attitudes. They're even from different parts of the US.

Honestly, though, despite the downsides, I don't mind tutoring online. Because of the quality of education, lots of students across the country need tutors to help them with schoolwork, but many can't afford their own tutor. Instead, their schools and local libraries subscribe to this service so that their students don't have to pay, and they get the academic help they need without having to pony up the money. I realize that the schools who need the service the most are probably the ones that don't even have computers to use it, but we do what we can to help. Local, personal tutors are even better, I think, but they're limited in numbers and scope; with online tutoring, the geographic limits are reduced significantly.

Unfortunately, right now, online tutors are limited in numbers, too!

Right now, Tutor.com's looking for tutors in the following subjects: Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, Calculus, Chemistry and Physics. If you're interested, email me for more details.

Julia had a student in her class who wanted to know if it was okay to say "play with myself."

"No, no," Julia quickly corrected her.  "You should say 'play by myself.'"

But, of course, the students wanted to know what the difference was.

"Well," she began, "you need two people to have sex.  But when you're alone, you play with."  Still blank faces.

She then wrote "masturbation" on the board.  Students quickly looked up this new word in their dictionaries, gasping and dropping their books when they read its meaning.  Hehehe.

I looked around the room as the training session went on.  A couple of us were busy scribbling notes on paper while others were scribbling notes in their mind.  We're all so different, I thought. Why are we here?

I'm sure it's their job to make us feel special about us being selected, but I'd really like to believe there was a reason the seven of us were selected and not others.  G has a drama and engineering background, and B has a music background.  T has a business background, but he is also very sporty.  H has teaching experience. M's an architecture student with a fabulous British accent.  C... well, admittingly, I don't know enough about her background to assess why she could be here. 

So why am I here?  And what do we all have in common, other than the fact that we speak English and get along well? 

I have a sociology background.  I'm not entirely sure how I can put that to good use here yet.  But I'll think of something.

I'm having a hard time catching up with all of you, but seriously, if there's an entry/update you want me to read, let me know. 

I have so much to write about, and so much I have written about in my paper journal, but I just don't have a power converter for my laptop to type it all in just now.  Let's just say I definitely came into Beijing shocked, but it wasn't culture shock.  You can read a little bit about it in xiangji, in my first Beijing post.

To summarize in one sentence: I am absolutely thrilled with my living and working accomodations.

This is where I work.

Okay, I'm off!  Take care, all!

I've been putting this entry off for some time now, but it's gotta be written.

Every day since Saturday, I've come home from work feeling melancholy.  It hits harder with each passing day, knowing that, realistically, this week will be the last week I will ever see these students. 

It didn't really occur to me before that I'd miss the tutoring center this much.  I think what really made it click in my mind were the last few students who found out I was leaving this week.  I already told a few of them the week before, but I was getting in trouble with the directors because they wanted to be able to control the transition as much as possible.  Having me drop the bomb on the students myself was tricky because I had no idea that some of them would react so strongly, and this was definitely risky for business.

It's surprising WHO reacted most strongly.  In the majority of cases, they were the students who gave me the most trouble.  And I was also surprised that I felt similarly about them, that despite all the grief they've given me, I still care deeply about what happens to them.  Perhaps it's because I ended up investing so much of my efforts to helping them. 

K saw me wear my blue scarf last week and said she had a matching pink one.  "Wear yours next week!" she said, "And I'll wear mine, and we'll both match!"  We both had forgotten our scarves this week.  Interestingly enough, the blue scarf was given to me by Sangeeta, and K is like a miniature version of Sangeeta.

We're not allowed to hug students (no touching beyond high-fives), so I avoided most chances to hug... I kind of regret that, especially with K, one of my favorite students.  I hugged a few of the older kids anyway, and no one stopped me.

Today was my last day of instruction.  I felt frustrated because my replacement was just so new and had a hard time multitasking between students and subjects.  I remember the growing pains of the first month, so I kept mum and just tried to train him as best as I could.

I got ready to leave the center and said my goodbyes to my bosses.  They began to praise me for my work there, and I guess it was the straw that broke the camel's back.  I began to cry, and I left very quickly after that. 

MF is taking his brothers out tonight, so I couldn't call him up for solace.  I remembered Brent's invitation to go to a comedy club in Sunnyvale, so I IMed him and called Joey to come with me (and call the other pool guys as well).  Hopefully, it'll be a great show.  Happy laughs will cheer me up.

It's been a rough week, saying my goodbyes to Bay Area people.  And it's still not over yet. 

I had made my announcement to a few of my older students shortly before the holiday break, and though they seemed disappointed at my departure, they had seen instructors come and go, so it was not a huge surprise.  I stuck around longer than a lot of PTIs, so it was just time for me to go, I suppose.

Since my last day is coming up soon, I decided that now was a good time to give my "two weeks' notice" (literally) to the rest of my students.  I knew that for some of them, it wouldn't be a problem since they had so many different instructors already.  For others, the departure would be hard.  The strongest reaction thus far came from my 6:00 table today. 

We were all kind of loud at the moment, laughing at a silly freewrite that D was writing.  Then I remembered to make the announcement, so I calmly said, "By the way, starting this Thursday, we're going to have a new PTI sitting at our table.  He's going to be taking over for me."

"WHAT?!"  The entire room fell silent except for the three students at my table.  I was caught off-guard by their outburst.  "But we like you!  Is it because you don't like us?  Where are you going?  Are you going to come back?"  It was a very sad moment for me, and I tried to buy their disappointment with leftover holiday candy and a few jokes.  But it was in vain, and the melancholy remained on their faces. 

"Is the PTI a guy or a girl?" V asked. 

"He's a guy."

"Eww," said K, the youngest. 

"What's wrong with a guy?" I said.

"Is he cool and funny like you?" V asked.

I hesitated for a second.  I didn't know the new PTI long enough to make a personality assessment and didn't want to lie, but I had to make the transition easier.  "Yeah!" I said.  "He's a great PTI.  Very competent!  In fact," I addressed V, "he'll probably be a bigger help than me for your Algebra II class!"  She was reassured by this, but not K.

K, a second grader, took the news the hardest.  I started at the same time she started at our center, so we had spent the entire year together.  As soon as class was over, she ran over to her mom to tell her the news, then pulled her mother to my table to talk to me.  "She likes you very much," her mother said to me.

My 7:00 table asked, "Why are you leaving?"

"I'm taking on a new job--"

"That makes sense," M declared.  "So you're getting better pay!"

"Well, no, actually.  I'll be paid less."

"It must be closer to home then," M went on.

"Well, no.  It's in China."

"WHAT?!"  They were puzzled for a moment, then C asked, "Do you speak Chinese?  Do you have family there?"

I said no to both.  They seemed more confused than anything else, but accepted this announcement calmly.

I am definitely going to miss working at Score.