Saturday School, Vacation Time, and other miscallaneous question marks from December

Random other tidbits from December—

I had to teach on a Saturday. Apparently, it’s a pretty normal thing for the government to decide that the country needs to work on a Saturday to make up for a holiday or something somewhere else in the calendar. Okay, fine, I had heard about this phenomena. Why we have to work on Saturdays when we don’t get snow days and didn’t get any other day off anyways doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever. The problem was, no one told me we had a Saturday school. I had been planning to go to Vienna one weekend in December (it was actually written in my planner for a long time). I happened to ask one of the teachers what the dates were for Christmas break before I finalized my trip plans, as I had been given several sets of dates, from CETP and the two different schools, and none of them matched. The teacher I asked nonchalantly mentioned Saturday school on the 11^th, and working Monday and Tuesday before Christmas, and then coming back on Monday the 3^rd. SUCKY. And now, I knew, so I couldn't simply say no one told me... because normally that is my very valid explanation. The primary school didn’t have Saturday school OR Tuesday the 21^st. So not fair! Plus, I couldn’t go to Vienna if I was teaching...  The day wasn’t bad, one of my classes asked if they could use my lesson to work on their Christmas program, and I played Christmas games with my other English classes—although my poor geography kids had to finish their test (since I let them have an EXTRA study day earlier that week.) Fortunately my friends decided to go to the Budapest Christmas Market that weekend instead, so I joined them after school and we stayed the night there (earlier blog about that).

THEN, a week after that, I get pulled aside and was told that I have 4 vacation days I have to use before I leave. At this point, there were 15 teaching days left til I go back to CA, and now I am supposed to miss a third of them? I was so frustrated. Not only because I could have used them to travel (ie Vienna instead of Saturday school) but because it made it really hard to try and figure out what days to take off, which classes to abandon, and how to make up for those lessons, since there is no such thing as subbing at the high school. I have left sub plans in the past, and found them exactly where I left them when I returned. So, I took off the Monday before Christmas break, (only to spend all of Monday running across town to and from the doctor and pharmacy, as I was definitely coming down with something and did NOT want to be sick for my big trip) and went Tuesday for the program and staff party (backpack in tow) and went straight to the train station after eating.  I am also taking off the Monday after Christmas break to recuperate. I guess the last day will probably be the last Friday, as that is what the headmaster suggested.