Saved by the Bell?

I’m having a “why am I in China?” day. It’s raining like crazy, and I’m mad at my teachers. I’m at once totally too busy and not busy enough. Everything keeps getting rescheduled. It’s impossible to keep track of what I need to do each day. I feel so unprepared.

Yesterday, my teacher calls me at 8:00 p.m. to reschedule Wednesday’s class for Tuesday (today). Ok, so I stay up late making sure I have memorized all my vocab and everything. That’s good for me, I guess.

So. So today I started out feeling extra prepared for my classes, but my teacher was totally impatient with me because I couldn’t remember the Chinese words for all the particles of speech. I mean, I don’t think I can define “predicate” in English. Just insane. I almost cried. I got all my vocab words correct on my quiz! But she didn’t seem to care.

And. And I was supposed to have a second class today, but she conspired with this first teacher, realizing that tomorrow’s class had been rescheduled for today — she insisted that we have 4 hours of class tomorrow instead of the normal 2 hours. What?!? I protested, but relented because BOTH of my teachers are there and I can’t say I’m not available. I can’t do it! The reason she wanted to reschedule is that today her student 1:00-3:00 p.m. cancelled, so she didn’t want to wait around for our 3:00-5:00 p.m. class. Not MY fault! And I did so much work to prepare for today’s class…

And. And then at the end of my class (we end EARLY) my teacher says, oh we have to end class because I have to punch the clock for your other teacher. What?!? We end EARLY so you can punch the clock for a class I’m not having. Oh, makes me so mad. Of course I didn’t say a word.

I mean, I was speechless.

I feel like everyone’s pet foreigner. Really uncool. And these are the two teachers I LIKED.

Sigh. And I’ve called two different people, but no one’s available for dinner. Eating alone again.

7:30 p.m. Update: I watched an incredibly depressing movie (bad move), but I called my teacher (good move) and negotiated down to 3 hours tomorrow and next week we make up the other hour. She was clearly embarassed and apologetic, but I’m still feeling like a pushover. Argh!