Perfection

- = traveling by plane
// = traveling over land

Netherlands - South Africa // Kenya - United Arab Emirates - India - Thailand - Indonesia - Australia - New Zealand - Tahiti - Easter Island - Chile // Ecuador - Spain - Netherlands

Courtesy of Derek's friend Kasper at JoHo.

Teacher by Day

Of course there are many disadvantages to being a teacher: the lousy pay, the heavy workload, the lack of social status ("Why do you have to study for 8 years just to become a teacher?"), the long work days, the teenagers who sometimes seem determined to bend you until you break, to name but a few. But, naturally, I would not be doing this program if there weren't also a lot of benefits to being a teacher. I get to spend all of my days thinking, talking, and breathing English language and literature. At the moment I do spend long days at school, but I hardly ever have any work to do at night or during the weekends. Gone are the days where you'd think: "I still have to write that paper on American lit. " or: "I still need to study for that Syntax final" - instead, I spent my free time watching House M.D. with Jochem. Preferably in bed, with our two cats, while eating something. Right now my life is pretty much stress-free. I don't make a lot of money with my internship, but at least I get something, which is more than most teachers in training who aren't working already can say. Some of my students can be pretty intimidating, but I find that they are slowly turning around - today, for example, a couple of students from my 'busy' class greeted me in the hallway. This may mean nothing to those not involved with spending 8 hours a day with a bunch of 16-year olds, but apparently I am just cool enough to be acknowledged, which is a big deal. I also can't get over how wonderful my colleagues are and I am very thankful for being able to work in such a pleasant, supportive, and well-knit group as ours. And the last addition that I would like to make to this list, is the fact that we have so many vacations. After only 8 weeks of work, I now have a complete week off to do as I please: watch romantic comedies, visit family and friends, and hang out in my pajamas all day while staying up all night. Life's not too shabby for me right now!!!

By the By

Explorer's Dream + India (in between China and Australia) is our latest idea. :P Is anyone getting tired of this, because I am! ;)

But what I really wanted to tell you is that yesterday Jochem and I had a 4-course dinner at Fifteen, the restaurant in Amsterdam based on Jamie Oliver's version in London, for a pre-birthday celebration. Of course Jamie Oliver is our God, and Jochem gave me the most beautiful watch from Fossil as a pre-birthday gift (though I suspect some other gift is also coming up). I had been pining for the watch for months, but of course never bought it due to all the saving. Anyway, we loved it and now I want to move in, get married and have lots of babies there! :)

This is just to say...

...that we STILL have absolutely no clue (NO CLUE!) where we are going on our world trip. We have received many responses and talked to a lot of people, but it only seems to be getting more difficult to pick a destination. For a while we were leaning towards Asia. Then we went back to South America. And now we are looking at world tickets again. We even tried to make a new list of countries that we want to see before we die, like last year, but that didn't help either. I am telling you, it is the stupidest and most spoiled problem ever! I am even considering just going to the travel agency and letting them assemble a random world ticket (of course I won't, being a control freak and all, but just to let you know how dumb it really is). Alas.