Fuckity

First, I'm tired.
Second, allergies hit today. (And I have BAD allergies.)
Third, the Aztec festival was today, and may I say "Thank god it's over?" The first part of the morning was great -- there were a ton of activities for the kids, including several carnival-type games ("kick the ball in the Aztec's mouth," "Spear the Hello Kitty pinata with a javelin"), soccer (in place of "tlacthli" for which we don't have a court), food (fruit, brownies, tamarind drink, chicken wraps, salads, grilled meats -- it was quite a spread today. Then we headed to the auditorium. Here was our mistake. We were supposed to have Aztec dancers (30 minutes), a sophomore play (25 minutes), a junior play (20-30 minutes) and approximately 8 5-minute freshmen plays. Which means, as you can see, that we needed just over 2 hours. It's better to overschedule and cut something (as sucky as that sounds), than to have 300 kids all gathered and have nothing to show them for the last 15 minutes.

Well, as it turns out, having the kids cooped up for 2 1/2 hours of anything is probably too much to ask, but having them sit for 2 1/2 hours of mostly-couldn't-be-heard plays was just.. fucked. My sophomores could be heard, because they had been practicing projection, but the juniors and freshmen were all but inaudible. And then the crowd got restless and talked, which made it harder to hear, resulting in an ugly vicious circle.

The Aztec dancers were the highlight (they were FANTASTIC), but there were drawbacks there, too. For example, I didn't know they were going to burn something (sage?) on stage, and as the auditorium filled with what I'm sure was sacred smoke, we called the custodian to take it outside before the alarm went off and we had to evacuate. I hope we didn't offend them (or the gods). Also, they're probably not used to getting ready while a play is going on a mere 20 feet away, so there was a lot of talking, some shouting, and some drumming. They also said they'd stay after and answer questions in the lobby, but they took off and I never saw them again. Later, I found out that some of the students had asked them to be quiet, too. I have great students, but I can just imagine that their requests, especially if they were repeated requests, came off as impolite. Which would suck, since the dancers were nice enough to volunteer their time.

Anyway, it was a long goddamn day and I am very glad it's done. All that's left on my agenda today is to eat Lebanese food and go to the gym.

Oh, and of course the whole baby thing isn't going well again. Duh.