The hard times have continued too. On Thursday, I didn't have any classes due to an exam that the 9th graders had to take this past week. So I was sleeping in pretty late (around 11:00AM) when I heard a clicking sound coming from my door. Thinking that the door should not be clicking unless I was unlocking it, I walked over in my pajamas and arrived in time to see my door open and a pair of big eyes (whether they were actually big or seeing someone not really dressed and standing in the dark and reaching for the door handle was a complete shock that made his eyes big, I'm not sure) looking in. I responded pretty quickly: I shut the door in his face, pulled the handle up to lock the door again, found that I hadn't used the second lock and turned that too since he had clearly gotten past the first lock, and went to get changed so that I could walk outside and inspect the lock for any scratches or something that could tell me if I had been careless the night before and simply forgot to lock it (and if someone happened to think my room was someone else's and accidentally let themselves in). However, when I came back I found that I couldn't get the door open. No matter how many different ways I played with the lock, I wasn't able to move it. So I messaged my liaison and sent an email to the field director so that they knew about the situation. My liaison got help right away. I wasn't locked into my apartment anymore than an hour when the locksmith got through and spoke to me with the help of another teacher from my school. Then I had to stick around so that I could give the police a report a little while later. I was given a demonstration of how to lock my door, which was well-intentioned but still kind of stung after going through that incident.
I've played through that day a few times in my head since. I keep asking myself if the door was actually locked, but since the I got up as a result of hearing something at the door my guess is that it was locked and the guy was working away at the lock. My guess is also that when I shut the door, whatever he used to work through the lock got stuck in there and made it hard to for the mechanisms to work properly. I can also say that making sure I had used the second lock falls on me, though even if the door didn't open I'd probably have to report an attempted entry. From what I understand, this kind of thing is relatively rare but since we had a previous incident that was very similar to mine about a month ago, there are a lot of questions about whether the foreign teachers should be moved, if the school can get double doors and security cameras installed in addition to the newly installed gate we got after the last incident. I hate the idea of moving, but I might not have a choice if it's for our safety.
Adding to all this, I tried to find one of the English teachers to ask for Chinese lessons but either he changed his schedule for the day or he's caught up in something I don't know about. I'm sure he's busy and has a load of things to take care of, so I didn't push too hard. But then he passed by my classroom during a particularly noisy moment and looked at me. So I feel really embarrassed about what a colleague I respect a lot must think of how well I do my job, and how that might affect my asking for Chinese lessons from someone who already has a teaching job and a lot of work to do. One of the head teachers offered an assistant in one of my other classes too, which was actually ironic given that the class she was talking about is really well behaved.
Anyway, I've been stressed but I have to be ready for my classes tomorrow especially since it's Saturday. Students are usually a little wilder when they've only had one day for their weekend. Which is pretty understandable for a bunch of 13-year olds.