The week before Thanksgiving I wrote:

I appreciate my former coworkers.  I didn’t understand, really, why they would be so relieved, and vocal about their relief, when a long weekend or holiday approached. I would get anxious because a day off just meant that things would be tougher when we came back.

A day off would throw me off my groove.

But here I am absolutely exhausted, mentally and physically. I haven’t been to yoga all week. By the time I get home from school in the afternoon, and go shopping for heaters and blankets and food, I’m starving to death and I just can’t go anymore. I feel homesick and sad and homicidal (just kidding–but not really).

I plan to work at school most of the week, finishing up grading and planning for next semester, and I’m happy to do it with no students there!

Now, it’s the week after Thanksgiving. I feel fantastic. It’s amazing what a little rest can do for one’s attitude.

The first day of the Thanksgiving vacation, I came down with tummy trouble for the second time. UGH! I’m not a graceful sick person and to feel bad on the first day of my planned work-alone time depressed and enraged me. The medics came and gave me an injection and Miss July brought me soup. I lay in bed all day, aching from head to foot.

But the next morning, I felt a lot better, and on Tuesday and Wednesday I went to school. On Thursday I went, at last, for a massage (more on this later) and in the afternoon, to the home of a co-worker to have dinner with her family and some others from the school. It was lovely. I felt perfectly at home and the food was wonderful–turkey (it was delicious!) and ham and cornbread dressing and broccoli salad and pumpkin pie, just like at home in Louisiana. Our hostess and her husband have two little girls, the youngest less than a year, and seeing her nursing at the table made me feel so happy.

On Friday evening a colleague and I spent the evening together talking about Life.

What a relief. What a blessing.

Saturday I went to Parras de la Fuente. I didn’t stay long, and I never got into a taxi so I didn’t see anything other than the center of the town, but it was so relaxing to walk around, just looking, listening, smelling, feeling. There are trees there–real trees. Oaks and pecans. It was beautiful.

Only this week and then finals begin. Two weeks of testing for the students and we are done for the semester.

Yay! Is all I can say. I’ll have time during testing to work on my plans for spring, since I didn’t get nearly as much done during Thanksgiving week as I had hoped.

Sometimes the body says, “Enough,” and gets sick in order to slow us down. Being persistent in asking for what I need eventually pays off. Offers of hospitality are blessings that need to be accepted.

Growth is a process, a journey, and the path isn’t always smooth or level. There’s discouragement and pain.  As Helen Keller said, “We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.”

I’m brave, sometimes. I’m patient occasionally.  I hope I’ve learned enough this time to do better next time. That’s my goal.

To keep learning and keep growing.