Classes

Yesterday I had my first two adult classes, both of which I was dreading.

The previous teacher told me that her adult classes were always fine, but that the mere fact of having to do them made her stomach sink. Tom tells me that he can't wait for his adult classes, because it's an opportunity to do real teaching - to teach people who want to learn, and to be able to deviate wildly from the prescribed text.

I'm not as enthusiastic a teacher as Tom, clearly.

I've mentioned before, I think, that I like to play with the children. Children you can fool into thinking that you know what you're doing. Adults can tell that you're just making it up as you go along. You can't distract adults with a game of hangman, particularly when there's only one adult. Because both of my adults classes have just one male student. No pair work going on here.

My first class yesterday was simply, no matter what, going to be difficult. I have two very young children who are on phonics book 1. I printed off a few worksheets, drew the alphabet in footsteps on the board, and waited. One child showed up. The other one never came. So it was a one-on-one lesson between an adult who speaks no Korean and a child who speaks no English (but knows how to say eight of the letters in the alphabet). Lots of drawing happened.

After what was, for me, a full day of teaching (bearing in mind that I only had five lessons a day last week), a guy walked into my classroom, introduced himself, and told me that he was nervous because his new teacher (me) looked like a movie star. I laughed and thought "aha, you should see me when I've washed my hair." It was nice talking to someone whose English was fairly good for fifty minutes, particularly after a long day of "repeat after me. I will go to scouting camp this summer. Repeat. Yes, everyone." The second was awkward and I got a little bit bored, but neither was as bad as I was expecting, I suppose. It's not a part of my week I will be looking forward to by any means, but at least I survived it. And it's something to put on the CV.

Today I have five classes, two of which will be actual teaching and three of which are review sessions. Those should also be fairly dull, but I'm sure I'll make it through. If anyone wants a spoiler for the potential next entry in my cooking blog, I'm thinking of making this, with pork, for dinner tonight.

And now some photos of our new flat.

 Starting in the spare room...

 Our spare mattress =)

The desk where I was planning on keeping the computer, confining the internet to one room. That plan didn't work. I am writing this from the living room.

 Pretty pictures on the wall as you leave the spare room.

Our hallway-cum-wardrobe.

The living room.

A cupboard. Not sure why I took a photo of this, but there you are.

Our bathroom, with all its friendly fish.

Our bedroom.

The mirror. Helloooo!

Looking on to the balcony (we are on the ground floor) from the bed. 

 Heading back to the kitchen.

 Our fridge.

 The kitchen itself.

 A huuuuge, top-loading washing machine. Pity I didn't bring any knitting stuff!

 Our pantry.

 The living room again. Hi, Tom!

 The chair on the balcony.

The rest of the balcony: our washing dries.

And the view out on to a car park. Lovely.