All in all we’re just another brick in the wall . .

So I could go on and on why being a teacher is not easy. I love being a teacher, but it’s not for the faint-hearted.  The hours I work are more than I’d like to (I just ended “work” at 9:40 pm tonight after starting at 7:00 am) — but I really, really love it.  I feel very fortunate to be able to work where my husband is posted.  And I feel especially fortunate to be teaching at the school that I’m teaching at.

Believe me, there are times when I really question all of the above.  But a good 90 percent of the time, I’m really really grateful for my job, the school, my co-workers.

Which brings me to the following post that I saw one of my friends on FB have with another friend:

I wish that the above were true — I wish I could “pick” my days to work — I wish I got paid a salary that was more than I was paid when I was 25 years old (that was 23 years ago) — I wish I didn’t work more than 12 hours a day.  I wish it was as easy as people seem to think it is — I guess that’s why EVERYONE wants to be a teacher, huh?  I wish I didn’t work weekends and holidays.  I wish I didn’t pay for prizes, posters, and materials for my students out of my own money.

But then I wouldn’t get to experience any of the following, which makes it all worth it:

Lanes are optional

In the picture below, there are 4 lines of cars in the allotted 2 lanes . . .

Sleepover and more food

John had a bunch of pals over last night — loudness soon ensued, movies, Xbox-ness, moving furniture, guns, soccer, baseball, have I left anything out?

Oh, yes, food. They went through 6 bottles of Pringles, 4 liters of soda (bad mom/teacher), and 4 home made pizzas (see 1 that was leftover below), and then I kid you not, 50 pancakes in the morning.

What’s fun about living overseas is the languages are intermingled — it becomes full on Spanish for several hours, then they switch to English, then back again.  ”Que facha!”  ”Bolo!” “Awesome!”  ”Nerd!” — fun, cool, to see all the kids switching back and forth — and fun to see them outside of school (I’m their teacher too).

They’re out playing soccer now. We now have just a little bit of quiet — but it was nice noise

Alan, Esteban, Edwin, Matias, and John

the leftover pizza . . . guess they couldn’t eat all 4

Leftover pancakes — I literally made 50 — and they ate them with Nutella too — sigh.

Donuts are done!

no donut cutter — so 2 glasses will have to do

Teddy, with flour on his head, waiting for a donut to drop

donuts waiting to rise

John rolled out the first dough

donuts fresh out of the fryer

donuts in the fryer — literally took 30 seconds on each side — super easy

powdered sugar glaze — not U.S. powdered sugar, so the taste is a little off, but, eh, who cares — they’re donuts!

The donuts!

Bored . . . what to do, what to do . . I know, Homer Simpson to the rescue!

I don’t like sitting around much if I haven’t been working (now if I’ve been teaching, I come home and become a blob — but that’s another story) — so here it is, Saturday, and John is not up.  Susie is sleeping over at a friend’s house.  And I’ve been up for 2 hours.  What to do, what to do.  Yeah, I’ve already surfed the internet – scanned Facebook — chatted with hubby who is not in country *ahem* (I do like to have that card to play) — soooo, what to do?

My fallback!  Make something in the kitchen!!  Something I can’t get here in Paraguay!  Whoot!

Lately, Susie (my sous chef – hee) and I have been having a love affair with my bread machine — the bread here in Paraguay (not including chipa and sopa paraguaya - traditional Paraguayan  bread — I love them!) is nothing to write home about — much less on the internet.  Sorry, but it’s not.

There’s no variety, nothing that is “wow,” as my Venezuelan friend, Berta Toro, would say.  So Susie and I have been making bread — pizza, cinnamon rolls, bread (you name it, we make it) — frankly anything that has yeast.  No, not the best, healthiest food in the world, but ooooh so yummy.

So I am making doughnuts this morning!  Whoot!  I’ve never made them, but I get to use two of my kitchen appliances:  the bread machine AND the deep fryer.  YES!!  And they will be doughnuts!

Hopefully they’ll turn out — I’ll let you know in a couple of hours . . .

CHEETO-landia (Land of Cheeto)

You know how I was talking about buying groceries and it ends up being a 4 hour adventure?  Well, I forgot to mention that every couple of months the kids and I decide we just can’t stand it anymore — we need some US products.  I start ordering things that I just can’t find here — rice krispies, cheerios, good yeast, spices, triscuits — your basic stuff that you can’t find overseas and you start getting a hankering for.  But then the kids chime in:  CHEETOS, CHEETOS, CHEETOS!  I cave every time because, to be honest, I like them too.  Susie gets puffed cheetos, John gets the flaming hot cheetos.  I press the magic computer button and order the food — and, VOILA!  our fun, U.S. food arrives 2 -3 weeks later — it’s a little like Christmas for a couple of days around here — but with orange-fingertip-smudges all over the place.

EFM Experience (Hey, that’s EFMish!)

So, I am an EFM — I used to be a dependent spouse, but for whatever reason, that lingo was disposed of a while back and now everyone in the family who is not the foreign service officer is an EFM.  They say it means “Eligible Family Member.”  Eligible for what?  ha.  you guessed it.  I say there are lots of other more appropriate (notice I did not say polite or erudite) words that could easily fit that acronym.

So what could be so bad, huh?

Well, there’s a bunch of  stuff that everyone, including the foreign service officer, experiences.  These things are not nearly as so EFMish (love that new word).  They can include: you don’t get your mail for 2-3 weeks.  Your kids don’t adapt well to the post.  The post could be violent.  The post could be boring.  There could be lots of pollution. Your kids are bullied at school.   All of that stuff is regular-post stuff.  Everyone experiences that, including the Foreign Service Officer.

Having an EFM experience means that you, and only you (the spouse) experience it. Here is my current EFM experience list — (if you’re an EFM, let me know if you can add to the list):

1. All spouses know that your foreign service officer may be posted to a high risk post such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, etc. But your foreign service officer also may be yanked at anytime and posted someplace else just because.   You’d think that this hardship would only happen once in a person’s career.  Not once.  Not twice.  Yup, I’m on my 3rd time by myself — this time I’m by myself in the foreign country we were initially posted at and he’s now in another one.  Go figure.

2. You will get the-house-that-sucks.  It will be too small.  It will have cockroaches that cannot be nuclear-bombed back to the stone age.  It will have iguanas that come out of the toilet (seriously!)  It will have water issues. It will have mold.  It will have termites that swarm all over the house. The landlord will want to kick you out.  And the beauty of all of this is that you will not get the-house-that-sucks until you have been living at your hotel at your new post for at least 5 months.  That’s the deal.  The-house-that-sucks goes hand in hand with living in a hotel for at least 5 or more months.  (You know you will be getting the-house-that-sucks when “they” tell you that they are looking for your perfect home.)

3.  There will be no jobs for spouses other than being someone’s administrative assistant in the embassy. You will be highly qualified, highly educated — you will be a:  teacher, nurse, engineer, doctor, lawyer . . . well, you get the idea.  But you will be an administrative assistant.  And you will BEG for your job.

I have been at a post where one or more of those things has happened to me — currently number one is going on . . . but being an EFM is definitely being eligible for . . well . . you name it.