Free time makes you feel what?

Free time. Ohh free time is nice. A little free time is great when you are caught up in work and the rush of life. Sometimes you get more than just a little free time and that is great too. You might call this a vacation or a holiday and you might find that you enjoy it a lot because you have so much free time that you are temporarily released from your otherwise stressful, or in the least repetitive, duties to enjoy a bit of the sweeter things in life. There is also that middle amount of free time. It is time that you have free but is never that far away from more work but and merely allows you enough time to complain about what you could be doing in exactly the time that that middle time allows you.

I have middle amounts of free time and it is hard to use them wisely and efficiently. To many, the amount of free time that I am allotted in a day would be rather pleasant and would enable one to do a myriad of fun and profitable things. I however, have accustomed myself to a pattern of creating things to do and then spending, or wasting, my time planning them out in great mathematical detail until the time is up and I must resume my work or whatever thing I would call not free time that interrupts the free time that I am lucky to have but waste.

Everyday I arrive at work at around 8:35 am and I am allowed to enjoy a little free time until class begins at 9. This will often be the most productive time in my day when one considers the many other moments of free time that I will be given throughout the day.

During these 25 minutes I will often try to plan my upcoming lessons. This typically involves making photocopies to provide for maximum busy work. Photocopies are amazing because the beautifully pleasant children can do a silly ABC activity on a sheet of paper and then when they finish I can make the suggestion, "Oh wow! Great job! Can you draw teacher a picture on the back?" This helps to fill a lot of time.

Other times I will prepare by reading through the teacher's manual and search through different methods and activities that suit my style. My style is one of extreme relaxation and an easy going attitude in the class and the early morning stupor doesn't aide in reverting from it. I still manage to prepare fun and interesting activities that require little work from me other than an occasional "NO SPEAKING CHINESE!" threat or the classic, "WHY DID YOU DO THAT? YOU BOTH SAY YOU ARE SORRY AND GO DRINK SOME WATER." (Whenever trouble is brewing I throw out the "go drink some water" comment and everything is saved by the children's mouthwatering desire for a little free time themselves.)

However, most other mornings I will neglect to do this photocopying and that lesson planning to go slouch in the tiny 4 year old chairs like a giant with my ass hanging over the sides to drift into a sort of hypnotic state where my face resembles that of a drugged out groupie's as he watches a Pink Floyd laser show in a planetarium. I zone out until the heart attack inducing baby music about sharing and saying thank you BLARES through the speakers. This is a new policy directed at all the teachers who's similar morning rituals has caused them to be so late every morning that such drastic methods seem to be the only solution.

My day continues on until I am given the longest break of the day between 11:30am to 1:30pm. There are surely many people who could find ways to do great and amazing things with this kind of free time but my colleagues and I choose to spend the two hours in our own way.

All the singing and dancing and yelling and sneezes in the face get one more than a bit exhausted and famished. I, along with my colleagues, WE, will usually dine with the children on whatever slop is served that day. I hadn't believed the worst about the food until I realized that it was cooked along with the breakfast at 8am and then left in several steal pots until it was brought into our classrooms at a deliciously steam less room temperature. However, it still isn't that nasty and when you are trying to be the cheapest mofo this side of Manila, free lunch is a great deal.

I will usually eat and make funny faces with my half chewed mouth, thus bringing my students to an unruly laughter most unsuitable in the eyes of the more stern and anal Chinese teachers, for about twenty minutes and then it is downstairs for socializing hour with the ill-tempered coworkers.

Now keep in mind we are all good friends and spend most of our real out-of-work free time together as well, but during this time we love to talk shit about people, complain of things in general and even go onto each others facebook sites to tell amusing stories involving "this girl who seemed beautiful at the time" and that guy who's movie list is "piss poor" and the other dude who's ass "I totally kicked!" We enjoy ourselves until someone gets those heavy eyes that either mean 1. the kindy food was rotten and we are all going to start dropping off or 2. it is time for the sleep club.

On those days that we don't do a mariachi dance while waiting for our turn on the one and only employee toilet we will adjourn to the large and spacious gym to take naps on the gymnastics mats. This usually gets me through the day. Even though the gym is quite large everyone tends to lay his or her mat three feet (one metre) away from the others and we all experience that comfortable warmth as we sleep and dream of work and lives far more challenging or legitimate than our own.

This bit of free time usually ends when, in an unsettling panic, we manage to sleep through the incorrectly set cell phone alarm and run about the school spottily grading old tests and quickly skimming through random homework assignments.

After the second class there is just one more hour of free time where I am able to drift into mindlessness as I wait for my last and most energetic class. If I'm not caught talking to someone on the top floor or grading more tests as my Chinese teacher gnarls at me while telling the children in Chinese what a clumsy and unprepared doofus I am, I will return to the low level computers that provide no leg room and the same small chair that fits any normal person's ass like a baseball bat.

I struggle to find booty comfort in the tiny and oddly grooved seat and I will attempt to read various newspapers and internet postings all the while wishing I could not have this middle free time that is not short enough to feel quick and not long enough to feel relaxing.

But we must remember that we don't get jobs for the free time that they promise and usually take away. We take jobs for the love of the work and the hope that it will lead to bigger and better jobs and also for the pay check that helps pay for that nice cushy chair which alleviates the pain accumulated from the "work" chair.

So in the hope that I might find better and more profitable things to do with my middle free time I ask for your, yes you oh weary and ghostly present reader, opinion and thoughts. Do tell or rather inform me and our other readers as to what you do with your little free time, middle free time, or long free time. Let us hear your stories be they long or short. Use some of your free time to tell me what you do in the rest of that free time. In the desire to change what you do you may start by taking the time to tell me what you do. How about it? Let's read....