The New Digs

When they did the kind of quick and dirty renovations to this building they used several of the largest rooms for group teacher offices. We had a nice big room in the basement that used to be the workout room. This year, they (correctly) decided that they needed larger classrooms, and so they moved us out of that office and into the so-called hotel section, where 7 of us now occupy what had been 2 hotel rooms. They put the 4 women in one room and the 3 men in the other room.

An arrangement like this is full of potential for amusement, too much for one post. Let's start with the hoteliness aspects of things. We have our own little hotel bathroom. Since it's all guys, we have decided we would leave the seat up (I live in a house full of girls, so that's a tough one for me). Instead of little shampoos and shower caps, we have lots of hand sanitizer and lens cleaner for glasses. And a hair dryer, which I think will be handy if either one small part of our body gets cold suddenly or if we put white-out on a paper too thick. We have a small shower and I intend to bring in fluffy towels (no robe or slippers) so that I can ride my bike to work and then shower. We'll see if I actually ever do this- it's an 8 mile, 35 minute ride.

Think about a hotel room with no beds in it and one thing you might notice is that there are no lights. I'm not sure why this is, but I've been in lots of hotel rooms in all kinds of places and almost none of them has an overhead lighting fixture in the bed part of the room, just in the entryway. So our room is lit pretty much by 3 little fluorescent desktop lights that illuminate most of our desk and nothing else. We have a window, but I can't imagine what it's going to look like in there on a cloudy winter morning at 7:30.

There's no room service, but fortunately, we have a refrigerator (no, not a minibar), coffee maker and lots of snacks. Because I am a rebel I have soda in the refrigerator when there's no soda allowed in school. There's also about 10 things of the same flavor yogurt because that's the only flavor the person who bought them likes. I hesitate to say anything about the food we have, because it attracts animals. 7th grade boys in particular are kind of like squirrels- if you feed them once they keep coming back.

All the rest of the space is taken up by the desks, supply closets, and, well, us. We don't have connecting rooms, so you have to go out into the hallway to visit the other. We've only been in there a week, so I'm going to wait a few more days before I comment on the dynamics of all the women in one room and all the men in the other.