I’m so damn angry right now!
My boarder, a home stay student from Korea, has been driving me nuts all week. I could just break something right now!
I’m not going to get into all the details right now. I’m too pissed to do that. Grrrrrr!
The really short story is that we have to provide three meals for her each day. She does pay for room and board after all. In the past week she’s been switching things around, telling me she doesn’t want the food that we’ve been making for her for the last two months anymore. She wants her Korean food. So she’s been making some of her own lunches this week. Fine. She’s also been pretty much demanding a lot of other things, totally taking advantage of our good nature. Remember her New York trip a couple of weeks ago when she came home two days later than we expected. Shit, we thought something had happened to her.
Earlier today I was cleaning. Sweeping the hardwood floors both on the main floor and upstairs. We put an air conditioner in her room, so it didn’t make sense that I would sweep hallway and the rest of the rooms upstairs and not hers. If I didn’t then any dust in her room would blow out onto the nice clean floors. So I went into her room and swept.
In the process of sweeping her tiny room I accidentally knocked over her garbage can when I moved it. To my surprise out fell the sandwich that she’d made HERSELF last night for lunch today. Huh? She doesn’t want our food so she’s making her own and for some reason she throws it in the garbage before she goes to school? Uhmmm didn’t we tell her that as of last week, we are in a financial bind thanks to my medical unemployment coverage ending? We can’t afford for her to make food and then just throw it away. What a waste! I also found it sneaky. She could have just left it in the fridge and perhaps my husband would have eaten it.
So all week she’s been asking if she can buy the supplies (and be re-embursed by us) so that she can make herself Sushi for lunch. Ah, what does that cost? She said she’d find out and let us know.
While she was telling us this evening that she was going to go to the Korean section of town tomorrow to find out what the cost of the ingredients that she needs is, I decided to tell her that I had accidentally found her sandwich in her garbage and asked her why she did that.
She freaked on me! She accused me of violating her privacy and then got all teary. She said that we’ve been treating her different in the last couple of weeks too.
Well duh! You lied to us about your New York trip. Said it was a school trip then went on your own and met people down there, and then didn’t come home until the Wednesday rather than the Monday when we were expecting you. You also gobbled up a gift that one of our neighbors had given us just before that. We share things in this house. Yeah, no wonder we aren’t treating you with quite the same warmth, you made us lose trust in you.
But violating your privacy? No way princess. I never go in your room except to either turn the air-conditioner on, off or turn it up higher. That’s it and you know I do that. Today was a first, going in to do you a favor and sweep your floor. I didn’t mean to knock over your garbage and discover your deceit.
Speaking of having her privacy violated. I’m the one who’s mail is gone through and who’s cupboards, that you haven’t been given permission to look through, are riffled through. I’m the one who’s computer you jump on without invitation even though you have one that we provided for you upstairs in your room. I’m also the one that’s being stalked by an elderly neighbor so I don’t go outside during the day time unless the coast is clear and have to do most of my gardening in the dark with the raccoons! Geeesh!
Our discussion ended with both she and I in tears, and my husband sitting on the couch looking stressed and perplexed and trying to moderate the discussion. She calmed down and went upstairs to wash her face. She had been supposed to go out with friends but didn’t think she would after that discussion. Ten minutes later she was back downstairs saying she was going out. She’s still not home and I’m wondering if she’ll even come back tonight.
She’s paid up until the 10th of August so I don’t know if she’ll want to leave early or stay or what. As of right now I don’t fucking care. Of all people to accuse of violating her privacy … I respect privacy since I don’t feel like I have any. Does she think I went snooping around in her room? Why would I do that … and why is she so worried I wonder now … hmmm?
I’ve got steam coming out my ears! I’m so damn angry. She’s walked all over us, especially in the last month. When we picked her up at her former homestay the owners of the house told us that she was a handful, that she was a little princess, and they sure weren’t kidding. They wished us luck … guess we needed it. Damn, we should have turned around and left her there when they warned us.
Why in the hell am I doing this boarder thing anyway? Oh yeah, I almost forgot that I’m home, sick, so we need the money.
I don’t need this shit, really I don’t.
[…] only other thing we can try is to maybe take in a border again – remember how we used to take in students from other countries who were coming here to learn […]