I Need a Hobby

I can sense my time winding down. Next week is the last week for my night class, and final exams are the week after that. My final day teaching will be July 3rd, after which I'll have a month of giving exams, grading, and waiting around to go home. I've started a new book and have been working on some DVDs, but there's gotta be more out there. You can only run so much before you get really sore.

For example, today I ran on two separate occasions and then played Frisbee in the park. I walked home and showered and still it was only 4:30. All of this exercise is great, but I need something better to do. You can only run so much. I'm not training to be Forrest Gump, after all. You can write as much as you want to, but at the end of the day, you still need something else to do. Once I'm officially done and have nothing to do, I just hope I can find a way to keep busy without going insane.

Last night I didn't go out because I really needed a break. I'd gone out every night of the week since Sunday. I wasn't necessarily going out and partying every night, but for at least an hour or two each night I was going to the center and watching the fireworks or meeting up with some friends after work. It was tiring after a while and I just wanted to relax at home. I tried to watch some TV downstairs, but since the TV is such a piece of junk, I couldn't even do that. Sometimes the TV just doesn't work and has a black screen but the sound will work. After a half hour it warms up enough and might stay on, but it can also occasionally black out again.

Sometimes that can be fixed by hitting the top of the TV, but it doesn't always. So I sat downstairs for 40 minutes listening to MTV, hoping it would come back, but it never did. If you think watching MTV is awful, imagine how bad it is just listening. Once I started hearing Paris Hilton's voice, I said enough was enough and went upstairs.

Tonight is looking to be a little better, as I was invited to a birthday party for a friend. It will most likely be a group of gringos, but that's OK because a lot of the other teachers that I've gotten to know are either leaving soon or have already left. As a result, I see the numbers of names in my phone book dropping. And this isn't only from the other volunteers in my program. Last night alone I scrolled through and deleted 5 numbers of people who had left. I've written about this before, but it's weird to countdown like that when people start leaving and you're up on deck soon. It must be even weirder if you're staying long term though.

Either way, I think I'll take tomorrow off from running, and though I'll probably finish the book I'm on and burn through another disk of The Simpsons, at least it will be keeping busy in some way.