Real Life

Ah, how redundant real life can be. One thing Dawna and I are struggling to adapt to is the grind of the 5-day, 1-9pm work week. We've always said that we don't work at a hard job. Sure, it is stressful at times. And yes, there are times where your kids are driving you so crazy that you feel like you're a few seconds away from losing your mind. There's also marking and writing tests all the time. Wait... this job is starting to sound difficult. Hah.. well it's not as bad. At the end of the day, we're not in charge of large amounts of money (i.e. my old bank job) or standing all day in front of a cash register while our back aches (i.e. Dawna's old job at Shoppers Drug Mart). We do get to see our kids grow and learn and all that other stuff. The problem is how redundant it all gets. We do teach different books to different kids... but it's all a variation of the same thing. There are times where you teach the exact same material to different classes about 300 times too. If there's one thing Dawna and I get very bored of... it's repetition. We both like seeing/experiencing new things... teaching new things... doing new things... but with a five-day work week and hardly any down time, it's extemely difficult to get out of this grinding loop. There are days where we both appreciate everything here for sure... in fact, most days we feel blessed to be here. But there are definately times when doing things like walking to the same place for our daily cab, having the same dinner every week, teaching the same material and doing the same thing over and over and over again is becoming quite... well... dull.

We both love being challenged. And we both love being able to help in some ways. Somewhere down the road, we want to travel to most of South America... meet people... see new things... help out where possible. We're also looking forward to getting to Africa one day and seeing what God has in store for us there. And who knows... maybe we each have enough gas in the tank for another Global trip. But in the meantime, before any of that happens, we have to accept that while we're here, we have minimal time to help in the way we like to help. Like I've said, it's great seeing little kids learning how to speak English, but our passions don't necessarily lie in that area.

I guess the key is seeing how we can challenge ourselves here in ways we want to be challenged. Now... to just get unused to this grind and the reality of an 8-hour/5-day-a-week work week life.

- Gilad