so i'm in town today, planning on travelling to swakopmund to try a marathon. only thing is i don't have my shoes. i left them in some shuffle of homework to grade, science equipment to organize, and sleep-deprived mental haze.

i've stepped way back at school. i'm nominally going there, teaching my classes, and leaving. it's the right thing to do--wednesday when i left the school, during classes, i was the only teacher. most mornings, when i go, my roommate has also been sitting in the other classes and keeping the kids busy and under control.

then, in the afternoon i've had organizational meetings for a poker and chess club and to run a business with some students. i'm trying to avoid maintaining order at these things -- i do enough of that already -- and organizing it so i'll have fun too.

i'm still not in too good of shape. i'm definitely not operating like the people who bring their running shoes to marathons. yesterday, a learner was laughing at me while i tried to get him to admit that it was his fault for starting a fight by flipping someone off. i threw my water bottle at the wall and it exploded. then, i cussed him out. these are things i don't expect from myself. it wasn't that big of deal to him, he's used to teachers doing that stuff, but i didn't feel that good about it. i also get various symptoms of anxiety (tight chest, bad sleep, etc) but they seem to be calming down somewhat as i have good days now and then.

i don't know what to do next year. i've been planning on bailing out, thinking that i'm sure there are some volunteer assignments i'd want to stay at for more than two years, and this is one where i'd like to stay for one. that i'm going to leave at some point, and that it isn't worth losing my sanity over. reading my email today, people are encouraging me to make it work, and offering good suggestions for how to look at my situation and which things to care about. i'm worried that i got in a hole that will be hard to get out of while i'm here, and that it may not be possible to get back to normal without a longer break than i can get while still in the peace corps. i don't know what i'll decide--it's likely that i'll put any decision off until next school year is starting so i have the longest r&r period possible before i make any decisions. i do thank everybody for their support and suggestions.

i do know that if you're standing around the finish line of the marathon in swakopmund this weekend a few hours after the winner finishes, you should expect to see me roll up, smile, and start drinking a beer. i'd like to say i'd be barefoot, but i probably don't have that in me-- i'm going to find some way to go and get my shoes.

[oops. i typed this whole thing out, thinking that yesterday's post didn't make it. now, i see that it did. so it's largely a repetition of yesteday's. you might want to skip it, or skip to the story of leaving town (which is new).]

i had a little bit of a breakdown. i've been really struggling at school to try and sort of maintain some level of order and discipline. i think too much so, because it started using the energy that i need to do the teacher stuff -- plan lessons and understand what's happening in my students' heads so that i can help them put the knowledge in. as my teaching suffered and i spent a lot of energy trying to chase the kids around to do what they should be doing, i kind of hit a spiral where i didn't do much in some days other than go to school and have a hard time. once that got going, it was a pretty quick downhill from there.

things kind of culminated in my leaving town, on the rev. a bicycle, on the last sunday in september. i spent a couple of days with my girlfriend, and was still pretty wrecked, so i came to windhoek to talk to my boss and see a nice man with a soft voice in a white coat. my girlfriend, boss, and the nice man all had a lot of the same ideas. they (we, i guess) agree that i should try and suck it up and go back to school for the rest of the year. there's not all that much of it left. we agree that i should get out, as much as is possible, from the business of trying to maintain order and discipline in the school. luckily, it is possible for me to send misbehaving students out of class, so i think i will use that as my primary classroom management tool. it can take a lot of time to send a kid out (as they argue about whether or not it is fair and promise to be good from now until forever) so i think i'll do it for a few days when it is necessary. i'm also going to petition for a new timetable so i come to school, teach my classes in order, and then don't need to stay for the rest of the day. i'm also going to try to get out of being a homeroom teacher. it involves a lot of responsibilities that i don't really (even now) know how to do correctly, so i'm always having to fill out this form again or copy these few pages of attendance information over again (because it has to be done in ink, without mistakes). lastly, i'm going to try to get out of the morning teacher meeting. it's been a source of frustration because there are lots of initiatives announced that i'm never sure if i should follow, ignore, or try to criticise constructively. it also really adds to my already painful awareness of help not being on the way and things not being likely to change much when they talk about, for instance, the secretary stealing money again and it being impossible to do anything to her.

yeah, ok. so i'm hoping that i can do this list of things and school will be a lot less stressful and energy consuming. then, i hope that i can use the extra time and energy that i'm going to have to start a couple of clubs. i'm thinking one running club, and one where we try to start with us$10 and increase it through business activities. i think, if the money is small enough to begin, it might be possible to instill a sense of "i could do this" in the participants.

and then what? you and i wonder. i'm just going to have to see. i quoted merle haggard to the nice man in the white coat, "i'd like to hold my head up and be proud of who i am." it's tough to feel good about myself right now -- i'm pretty trashed from doing this wrong, and it is coming out rather painfully in the form of being moody, short-tempered, and pessimistic. kristin's really bearing the brunt of it, and it's wearing her down fast too. all that's not good. there was an interim plan, involving trying to arrange a transfer to a school where things are in better shape for next year, but right now i don't think it's a good idea. if the things i'm trying to change in my current situation don't help me feel better, i don't feel at all confident that burdening some new school with moody, pessimistic, short-tempered, unmotivated me is any kind of fair. i also think that it will help me be more motivated at my site if i know i'm not just killing time there until the year ends and i start over in some new place.

if this isn't working and i'm not feeling better by the end of this year, i'll pull the plug on the whole thing. i've no doubt that, one way or another, i could survive another year in this manner. but, why? when you're a volunteer, you don't get a paycheck so you're sort of in it for the good feelings. i don't expect wine and roses, but if i'm sucking it up here, feeling bad about myself and not being the kind of person i want to be, i'm going to quit. i'm not sure what that would mean i'd do next -- it depends on what kristin wants to do and how rough of shape i'm in. it's possible that i'd stay in namibia and find someone besides the peace corps to work for, or that kristin is going to want to pack it in too. i think, if she lets me, i'm going to hang around with her.

there's been a big ruckus because i left without turning in marks for the grade 10 students, and they were absolutely without a doubt no excuses supposed to be in by last friday. mix in a little lack of clarity from the peace corps to the school on what's going on with me and when to expect me back, some tempers and mutual frustration between the principal, myself, and my roommate, and it's ugly.

to reward you for reading all that, i want to tell you the story of leaving town. kristin came and visited for the weekend and brought her bike so she could ride it home. typically, for me, i had two bicycles that don't run (the rev. a had lent some parts to the rev. b, which unfortunately is exhibiting the symptoms of a cracked frame), and through the weekend i'd been trying to patch one together so i could ride out for the first 10 or 20k with her. finally, saturday night i got the rev. A pieced back together in a manner that provided little confidence that it would work. kristin and i left at dawn, and i rode about 500 meters before the wheel slipped and it wouldn't go. i screwed with it for a while, rode another couple hundred meters and it happened again. i told kristin bye (she had a hilly, sandy 100k to ride, and didn't need to wait around for me) and kicked some rocks. i screwed with the bicycle some more and wishing i was the kind of person who usually had an operable bicycle, then put it together to go home. i experienced strong feelings of not being ok, not wanting kristin to be gone, and such. i started riding and behaving in a manner usually associated with 10 year-old boys "running away from home." i rode hard for about 10k, and amazingly enough caught up with kristin (who was pacing herself for a whole day). i explained the situation to her, and we agreed that i'd just come with her. i didn't have any changes of clothes, wallet, or food packed, although i had some water and my cell phone (no charger, though). i called my boss in windhoek, and he said it was ok to take a couple of days to try and feel better, and we were off. i felt so relieved, and the kilometers slipped away. i remembered, from riding the road before, that around 30k felt like the hardest part, because you had so far left to go, but would usually feel pretty tired by then. i kind of forgot that there is a big hill that you go down and then a bigger one that you go way up. so i'm riding down the hill, wind in my face, feeling relieved, and my pedal falls off. turns out that the crank's stripped and i'm in doo-doo. we spent a couple of hours moving several hundred yards doing things like tying the pedal in the wallowed out hole in the crank. i tried a piece of chain and a bungee cord with various arrangements of tape and shims found on the road. none of it was working, and i wasn't going back, so kristin decided we should send me on her bike with my cell phone so that i could go to bethanie and get a ride for her. i took off, and was really cruising compared to my historical average speed for the trip -- i was making about 20k an hour when i usually average 10 on that road. now, i've never seen a car on that road going the same way as i'm traveling, but a truck came along. i saw someone wave, but figured that if they had kristin they'd stop, so kept cruising along. i went another hour, and a red truck came up behind me and died. kristin jumped out and was smiling and said they were nice and could she please ride the rest of the way (for the exercise) and i'd ride with the truck. meanwhile, the truck people have the hood open, and oily liquid is coming out of the water pump around the hole for the impeller shaft. that's not so good, but kristin explains it has been like that and they've been stopping. they're carrying plenty of water, and fill the radiator back up and try to tighten the valve covers because it seems a little possible to hopeful us that the fluid is leaking from the valve cover. this goes on for a while, with a couple attempts to start it and some tweaks to the radiator cap to get it to seal, then the battery goes dead enough to stop trying to crank. we start trying to push-start the truck, but the wheels don't have enough traction, and every time the driver lets out the clutch they just skid. finally, we decide that i'll go along on the bike and when i get cell service i'll call for help. i do that, the tow truck comes, eventually, and we're there. it wasn't the luckiest day, i guess, but it sure felt nice to be on the road, dealing with problems as they arose.

ok, so that's it for now. thanks for your support and wish me luck.

hey. i need to make this quick.

long story short, i bicycled off the job last sunday. i've been in rough shape. feeling tired, helpless, like i was trying to run the school by myself, etc.

i don't know if circumstances really justify how bad i've been doing. i think that running was really helping me to cope and that spraining my ankle sort of took that away. it wasn't long until i was just a wreck. so, what now?

i've been to talk to a man in a white coat with a soft voice, and to my boss at the peace corps, some peace corps nurses, my girlfriend, and some other friends. i've explained how i feel, what's been going on, why, and everything. people say that it makes sense and that it sounds difficult and ask me what i want to do. that's a hard thing to decide, so i'm going to try and suck it up and finish the year. i will try to do it by going to school a day at a time, and changing my understanding with the boss to require as little involvement with running the school as possible. i think if i show up first thing in the morning, teach my classes back to back, then get out of there and go do something else that it will help a lot. i will get out of a lot of the chasing kids around who are fighting, trying to get the bell to ring on time, and observing teacher misbehavior. if i can cut out that stuff, i feel like i'll be able to handle it, and possibly to enjoy life again.

the boss and i talked about transferring me somewhere else. i'm thinking (he doesn't know this yet, and it isn't final) that i want to try and sink or swim in the same place. i think it will help me be succesful in berseba if i'm not thinking ahead to the nearby day when i leave the school. i also don't think it's really fair to some other school if i show up all moody and run down from berseba and they have to put up with me. at least berseba made the bed they're sleeping in. it will also avoid some pressure for me -- if i'm too messed up to be a teacher, and realize it, i'd rather not have the pressure of someone just having bent over backwards to give me everything i asked for.

when i talked to the man in the white coat with the soft voice, i did feel relatively confident that it was worth thinking about staying here. i do like teaching. and namibia. and life in the village. i think i'm just worn out from taking too much responsibility for having an organized, disciplined school. a lot of that i can't control on my own, and i'm not helping other teachers be responsible and disciplined by trying to do it on my own. i've just really believed that it was the right thing to do, so i've been trying. it also certainly is part of it that i don't want to leave my girlfriend, or be responsible for her deciding to go home early.

it doesn't seem nice, though, that i'm so messed up. my temper's short, i'm irritable, a lot of my reflexes aren't that nice, i'm really emotional. i fell like i wasn't so much like this when i came here, although i certainly was to some extent. i guess i'm hoping, though, that if i learn how to cope with this situation and be a decent person that i'll be able to do it anywhere.

or something. i just don't know. do, however, remind me to tell you the story of how i left berseba. it is funny, in a pathetic way.