money, 7th form mentality, and the flu (but I'm not sick)

The PC sent us an email with a breakdown of what percentage of our living allowance should be allotted to various categories. It's...interesting. They think that "incidentals", ie postage, phone cards, and Internet, should only come to about $34.65/month. My phone cards alone probably are more than $50 most months. However, utilities, travel, recreation, clothing...basically all other categories are much lower than they assume. And it's not like I short myself in other areas to afford phone cards...I've never been short on money since moving here.

I might keep track of how much I spend on food next month just out of curiousity. PC says 60%, or about $140/month, and I know I spend less than that. And even if I didn't get produce and milk from Nadia, I still think it would be less than what they think. Interesting.

~*~

I really like teaching my 7th and 8th forms, but I think I realized yesterday why I should stick to teaching younger children as a career. I don't have an immature enough mind to keep up with them. I was teaching the construction "as _____ as _____", and for an example, since I wanted two things the same size, I held up a purple pen and a green pen and wrote on the board, "The green pen is as long as the purple pen." And then the boys started to laugh, having mentally removed one space from the sentence. Mild chaos erupted for a few minutes, and I have to admit, I was trying not to laugh myself, more at their reaction than anything else. Although I didn't know that their English anatomy vocab was that good.

~*~

I only had 3 out of 16 6th formers today, as the flu has pretty well wiped their class out. Apparently if 1/3 of the school is sick, we then will have a quarantine, which has already happened in Kyiv and Poltava. But I think we're okay here.

~*~

7 kids came to my senior English club last night!!! Granted, all we did was make Valentines, and the English component was that they had to write something in English on them, but they're starting to come. And as they continue to come, I can sneak the English in...mwuhahahaha...