It was all a dream…or was it?

My whole life I’ve had this slight problem with sleep walking/talking. Mostly, it’s just been sleep talking, but I do have a few funny stories involving me, curtains, and unexpected company. Usually, I just have these nocturnal activities when I’m really exhausted. My body needs sleep really badly, but my brain is recharging at full force and needs to do something I guess. It doesn’t happen so often, maybe only a few times every few months.

But since moving to Japan, my sleep walking/talking has increased dramatically. Or maybe I should call it sleep teaching. Yes, that’s right. Apparently, teaching is always on my mind because I always have these very vivid dreams where I’m teaching my students English. And for a while, I tried to convince myself that I was only dreaming these things, but really, I knew better. And as I mentioned before, the frequency has increased. So, I have these teaching dreams at least once a week now, but more often than not, it’s twice a week. And I tell you what, it’s really annoying! In my dream world, I want to escape my job, but oh no, it doesn’t happen that way!

Here’s one of the latest of my teaching dreams. I had a dream a few weeks ago that I was teaching one of my adult students the difference between purse and man purse.  Before you start laughing, these are things that I would actually teach my adult students. It’s important to culture if you’re traveling abroad. But, anyway, as usual, I had convinced myself that it was just a dream, a vivid dream…until I was cleaning my room and found a piece of paper with “purse” and “man purse” written on it. Then I knew that it was a sleep teaching dream.

I chalk it all up to the fact that I must be a rock star teacher if I’m committed enough to teach in my sleep.