So, I was just going to do a short update and then I realized it had been since before I started classes. Wow. Anyway, teaching is wonderful. I was a little concerned at first that I was the hardest English teacher on the face of the planet, but now I am learning how to present things a little bit better. A couple of my classes are especially fun because they have ten students or so, verses the classes that only have two or four. I'm enjoying giving them random games to do.
I'm doing Wicked, the Musical with my advanced classes. Wicked has about ten million idioms and invented words in it, so we are having fun with it. They are finally hooked. We listened to "The Wizard and I", and that took us two classes to get through. I told them today that next week we will hear about Elphaba going to college for the first time and that she will be roommates with Glinda, and wondered outloud what that would be like. My students definitely sounded curious and interested, which is always exciting!
I am reading a chapter of Mere Christianity for my Christianity Today class. At first, I was concerned that I had nearly killed them with the difficulty of C.S. Lewis' English...but then all this week I have been getting comments on my class. One woman told me how much she had enjoyed it (I had been sure she hadn't) and another woman came and told me that she couldn't attend the class because of her schedule but that a student who was there last Friday had showed her what we had read, and could I please give her a copy of the reading so she could read it? So, I have decided that I really can't read Japanese people yet. But it has been really exciting and encouraging to see people interested in my class!
I have a class on Thursday evenings that hasn't had any students yet, and one of my advanced students told me today that she is going to start attending. This was very surprising. I told her that I thought she would be very bored by an intermediate class, but that if it was just her there, we'd have to do something different. She immediately suggested Spanish. *chuckles* I hope she's the only one there. It would be so much fun to have a Spanish class!
My other big news is that my church bought me a bicycle. It is really, really lovely. It is orange! And it has a nice basket in front to carry my groceries and a bell to ring at all the pedestrians before I run them--ahem, pass them. And it has lovely, bad English on the side. It says: "Gentleness wraps me up in a brilliant atmosphere." I am very much in love with my bicycle. Rainy season is going to be sad.
