We are in the Philippines near Cebu at a place called White Sands Resort. I managed to get the university to allow us to teach enough extra classes so that we could have a brief holiday for some snorkelling. Our students didn’t mind cramming as that would mean more free time for them while we were gone. There is a trust thing that exists based on our time spent at this university. Yesterday, I got the news that my mother…
The work in digging into one’s deeper self in order to better understand oneself is one that is not to be taken lightly. For most, it is likely a task that would not feel right and be quickly abandoned. Yet sometimes, the work is uplifting and animates the spirit nd the body. Though these images were taken indoors, today “I,” the ego or conscious self, found a balcony surrounded by palm and other tropical trees in the Philippines for a…
In taking time out each day to prepare my lessons, to teach classes and to evaluate what I have done and where I have been in relation to my university students often leaves me drained. I have been doing this for a long time, and find myself still doing this six years after I have retired. I get tired but I don’t seem to know how to let go of my role as educator, teaching about the human psyche, personality…
There is only one week to go until Hallowe’en. Hallowe’en isn’t a Chinese thing nor is it a celebration that we care for even in Canada. We do buy the treats to hand out in our town as it would be a faux pas for the retired principal to not do his part to maintain social events. We are getting tired as we have picked up another teaching gig in order to help our university gain even more status. We…
It is hard, harder than I thought, coping with my mother’s death. I am left wondering why as we weren’t very close to each other. Because of a dysfunctional family history, I was more than glad to live at a significant distance from her with visits usually limited in time every second year. I had no respect for her as a person. Yet, she was my mother and had her own issues to which I was never privy. Other than…
It’s Monday afternoon and I have finished my two morning classes and I don’t have another class to teach until tomorrow morning. I teach sixteen classes each week, just slightly more than my Chinese colleagues, but less than the other foreign teachers. Sixteen teaching hours a week leaves me with a lot of free time. Since our scheduled with only some overlapping hours, much of the spare time is spent alone. Americans make up most of the other foreign teachers,…
While she was teaching an afternoon class, I went for a walk to a small park about a half-hour from our place. It’s a Friday afternoon and I was surprised that the park appeared to be abandoned. All the other parks we have visited were always busy with people. This park didn’t look as well taken care of as the others either. Seeing a few small paths through bushy garden areas, I did the unthinkable. I got naked outdoors in…
The first week of extra classes are done for me. My wife still has another class to teach this morning. Then, we will have the weekend off to go and do more exploring. We are planning on doing some dancing in the square along with almost a hundred others who live in our neighbourhood, all older Chinese couples for the most part. I have been meditating every day and finding it to be invaluable for my sanity. I have avoided…
I am learning to cope with by daring to add nudity to my life at home. The mental crash yesterday has been navigated and life goes on. I bought a few posters for the wall, which you can see above, so that the place feels less bare. Next week, both of us will be getting the rest of our classes, with the addition of first year students who are spending their first weeks on campus training to become cohorts. They…
The darkness is back with a vengeance. It is getting harder and harder to contain it. I am so thankful that I am able to keep it hidden from view from my students when I am teaching, and from my colleagues and friends when we are socialising. However, my wife knows. She always knows. However, there is nothing that we can do about it, such as my returning to proper Jungian psychoanalysis while we are here in China. Because of…