Finally, A Good Lesson

Today was a great teaching day. The first reason for this is because I finally decided to script my entire lesson, which was a bitter pill to swallow put in the end ensure that I had (almost) no stumbling moments with the class.

But the real difference-maker is that we (meaning including me) were finally with the intermediate-level students today, and it was great. I knew it was going to be a good lesson when the students got into pairs without me having to say anything. The beginners were so reticent with their English that they had to be almost literally led by the hand to whatever was happening.

It was really nice to have UNDERestimated the amount of material that students know. I was going to teach them the word "crypt" and all I needed to do was put pictures up on the board and one of the ladies in the class went "oh! (crypt in Spanish)!" and that was all that was needed.

Also, when the students made a mistake, they either immediately corrected it or were at least able to understand when I told them what was wrong.

My favorite part of the lesson was when an elderly Japanese woman named Keko correctly identified who Wallace Simpson was (and Edward too-we were studying "love affairs").

I also foolishly offered a prize to anyone who could pick out Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, and now I have to find something silly to give to one of the students.

In other news, last night my flatmates and I went out to a "pasta bar" and I had the same dinner-pasta with pesto sauce-that I was going to make at home, except now I got to pay $10 euro for the priviledge. But that's not necessarily fair; the pasta WAS very good. It's right around the corner from me, in the George Orwell plaza (!). I'll probably make it back there again soon.

My flatmate now believes that Jews control the weather. They caused the tsumani and they caused the extra-snowy winter everybody had. The base of operations is somewhere in Antarctica. It certainly IS sunny in South Florida this time of year, but isn't that a chicken-or-egg scenario? i.e. did the Jews move there and THEN made the weather nice, or did they move to West Palm Beach BECAUSE they had already created favorable conditions for themselves?

It looks like Opening Day for baseball isn't that big here after all. One of the students was surprised when I told him that the USA was the best baseball nation in the world. His guess was Cuba. What would the word for that be: lingocentrism? Ethnocentrism? That doesn't seem right. However, opening day pitcher (and Cuban national) Livan Hernandez, one of the most mediocre pitchers ever, would certainly be happy to hear such things.

I have an April Fool's "joke" but the punchline might last longer than 4/1.