new hat and friendly librarians

It's a pleasant sort of thing, when you walk in the library and the librarians recognize you, smile at you, and let you use the Internet even though you forgot your library card. It almost makes up for the dreadfully slow connection.

I thought school was starting on Monday, but it turns out that it was "Christmas observed," so no school. I thought it started on Tuesday, but it didn't, for reasons I don't know. It started today, but today's my day off, so I don't start school until tomorrow. Basically, I keep changing the dates on my lesson plans.

I think...and this may not happen...that I have fifteen regular classes of English per week, ranging from 2nd form to 10th form and having most groups at least twice, plus three extra sections of what's known as "country studies". Basically, I teach about American culture and history, designing my own curriculum. It has me pretty excited.

I bought a new stocking hat. My first one, I bought for 3 hyryvnias at a church rummage sale, and while that was extremely cheap, it had a habit of working its way up my head and looking very pointy. So today at the bazaar, after complaining about the hat for several months, I bought a new one. Black, pretty, and tight-fitting enough and round enough that I will never look pointy again.

Tif and I completed our hair-cutting experience quite well...honestly, no one's commented, so I suppose the bottom two inches made no difference anyway. There's supposed to be a big ceremony here when a child turns one and gets his/her first haircut. We dispensed with that. But it was fun anyway.