OK, Teaching. I can do that.

Each evening I checked e-mail, spoke to various folks via Skype or my cell phone, and prepared / decompressed. My sleep was often very spotty, which disturbed me, as the morning light woke me at 5. Every time I thought I was done, a bunch of new lists or planning tasks would pop into my mind, and sometimes the wireless connection would make sending an e-mail into a ten-minute struggle of logging out, waiting, opening a new window, logging in again, and waiting some more as the message dribbled out byte by byte; moving the computer around the room sometimes helped find a sweet spot, but sometimes it would crap out altogether.

Monday was the first day of class: we had to get 30 students across town and into the classroom building at Kings College that’d been arranged for us by our none too accommodating agents in London. Being told by one that “I’ll meet you at 9 at the entrance to Waterloo station,” I was unimpressed when the time came: she was nowhere to be seen, the rush of people was unbelievable, and after several orbits of the complex station I was secretly relieved to get a call from a couple of students who had arrived early, bailed on the assembly point (bad) and navigated over to the building (good). “Stephanie” showed up in my classroom at 10 AM, fifteen minutes after we had arrived 15 minutes later than our 9:30 official start time (and of course we had to ask the security guard to unlock our classroom). Not having gotten her cell number nor insisted on clarifying the meeting point, I chalked it up to “live and learn”—and I trust that there won’t be a “next year” when it comes to these agents who shall remain nameless but not blameless.

A portion of each class has to be given over to organizational matters, and I'm also making them journal informally every day; I sit in a cafe, usually, and quickly mark and comment on their short pieces; generally the quality isn't too bad, and there are occasional insights and gratifying breakthroughs. Walking across the Millennium Bridge afterward, I felt as I belonged here a little bit--I had a function other than tourist--which was a good feeling. I'll be curious to see the new Harry Potter movie, which I am led to believe has a scene on this bridge.

Next up: teach, walk, mark journals, eat cheaply, mark, plan, sleep, wake up, sleep, make lists. Repeat until done.