Lax

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Don't know what's up with the title just decided to put it.

This past weekend was a bit of a wreck. I had one class that was absolutely awful. I had to make one kid stand up and face the blackboard and not speak, one other kid I sent out of the classroom and then I had to have three kids stand at the end and the whole class thank them for giving extra homework. This class is a K6 class that acts as a whole like a K4 class because their level of English is so low. I have two K6 classes and two K7 classes and I feel like I'm teaching K5, a K6 and two K7 classes. It's a bit strange. I have two extremely slow classes - one of my K7 classes and a K2 class but they're not that bad to teach because the kids are really good kids. My K3 class and my other K6 class were being absolutely discipline nightmares but Russell helped teach me how to deal with the K3 class. Now I just have to figure out what works discipline-wise with the K6 class.

I lost my ATM card - which was really horrible. I lost it Friday night and I had to wait till Saturday during lunch to do anything to stop it or freeze it from being used (which was absolutely crazy). I hated waiting but it turned out that no one had used it so it wasn't a big deal. I'm not exactly sure what happened to it as I still have my wallet but whatever it was wasn't a big deal in the end (although it definitely was at the time).

I also had a third nightmare wherein I walked into the Salon with dirty pants on and the whole Salon was staring at me and afraid of me - which unfortunately was true. All of this hit me on Saturday and I began wondering if I were having to pay for making the wrong decision of not going home to take care of my father during his surgery recovery time. Who knows, maybe I was. And maybe I did make the wrong decision. I feel a bit guilty for not being able to go home but I hope in the end I've made the right decision and that everyone who is there will take care of them to the best of their ability. I will continue to call him to make sure everything's going all right but that's pretty much all I can do from here.

Friday night I decided to go out to get my mind off of things and Camillo and everyone else was being really nice about everything so I ended up having a really good time. Saturday night Camillo came over to study after he and I went out to eat with Cat. He was in a very strange mood and didn't really want to study the way I like to study. For some reason here when people are learning languages they mainly like to drill words into their heads like a crazy fiend and not do too much with them. I've been having Camillo do some writing and talking to him in English (of course) but he didn't want to write on Saturday so we watched a movie together - Patch Adams (one of my favorite movies here as it has a lot of scenes of home in it and Robin Williams) which I brought from home so it's only in English. I put on the English subtitles and we went over a bit of it together - which was good. In the end he ended up just watching it straight through though which was probably for the best.

Today I taught Angel, Silence and Samuel and had a class of Chinese myself. Angel and I had class and watched Ice Age 2 - in English (although strangely enough it kept flipping into Spanish every now and again - which I thought was a bit strange since it's originally in English). Silence and I had class and then watched a bit of Polar Express (only in English - no subtitles). It was very obvious to me that he was following it mainly by the actions of the movie but it's still good for him to listen to the English. Samuel and I worked a bit on days of the week and months and I told him we can watch Ice Age 2 in Spanish tomorrow. I think it's really good for them to watch these movies as listening is a very important part of understanding a language and also really good for them to explain what's happening afterwards. I remember when I was in Costa Rica I used to watch TV with the family. Even when they would watch something like Friends (which would be in English) I'd do my best to read the Spanish subtitles. I know it helped me a lot because I could notice a difference every day - of course it was only one of the many things I did in Spanish every day but every step counts.

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