Behind the 8 ball and other stuff

It never fails.  Just when I think I'm on a roll and things are going smoothly, I find myself playing catch-up (not to be confused with the Katchup we use on or in food).  This year I'm trying to sort both myself and my students out so that we can have a semi-productive year.  I say semi-productive because it takes the first year at a new school to learn both the written and unwritten rules of a school.  What do I mean by unwritten rules?  Well, you know, everything that's not covered in the student or teacher manual that you are supposed to know because you learned to read minds in university - well ok, maybe not read minds exactly but certainly guess accurately.  It's all part of the fun of being a new teacher.  That combined with learning a new language (or in this case new dialect of a vaguely familiar language), dealing with students whose reluctance to do anything remotely related to work (they make the most stubborn mule seem obedient and placid) and parents who firmly believe that either a)  their darlings are absolute angels or b) all the problems in class are the teachers fault because, you guessed it, their darlings are absolute angels.  So between that and dealing with a combination of cold and allergies (I still haven't figured out if my cold is allergic to something, or I'm allergic to colds) life has been grand.  Could be worse, could be better, but definitely worth a comment or two.  Now that I'm mostly sorted out life should be getting back to normal.  Which reminds me - what exactly IS normal anyway?  Until next time, coffee is calling me.