Category: Expat Life

Jet-lag and Adjusting to the New Life

Jet-lag and Adjusting to the New Life

I’ve been back from Korea for about a week now.  Last week was tough due to 20 hours of flight time in 3 days.  I arrived back in Doha at 5am after doing a presentation at KOTESOL in Seoul and taught later that day at 2pm.  The weekend was a welcome break as it allowed me to catch up and get some much needed sleep.

Work is going well.  The students here are much easier to work with than my previous placement in Qatar.  I’m thankful for that since my class-sizes are each over 20.  Overall I like the job so far.  Everyone is kept busy by their work and is content to go about their days.   There is still a lot to learn about the admin side of my work but that will come in time.  For now I’m still living in a hotel apartment which has turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  When permanent housing does happen it looks like I’ll have to shop for furniture and pay my own utilities.  And right now I’m content to just focus on work and get that under control.

I’ve been keeping busy outside of work as well taking both French and Korean lessons during the week.  Today it’ll be two hours of French after I finish work and then maybe the gym before I hit the sack.  This makes the weeks go by quickly.  Though I generally have to do a bit of work on the weekends, I try to keep them all about relaxing and cooking. This helps me decompress from the stress of the weekly grind.  I’m planning to start taking part in some swim/run sessions held at the beaches at the Pearl every other weekend but so far my body refuses to get up on time which means about 5am on Saturday mornings.  Considering how busy the weeks are here I can hardly begrudge myself the extra rest!