Monday, Monday

Nothing too exciting to report about today. I taught my summer academy course this afternoon. The rough element about teaching these classes is that we almost have brand new students every week. It's tough to set expectations and classroom policies with such rolling attendance. It was nice that a few students stuck around for another week. Today, we studied the weather, especially learning simple past tense to express what the weather was like yesterday. They were really sharp. For our last hour of class we learned a little about Brazil. I went through a power point that Nick's girlfriend had made up and the students loved the pictures, but went crazy when they saw pictures of Brazilians with black skin. I asked, like I always do after an hour of learning about a new country if they would like to visit. A few of the students said they would never go to a place where black people were. I was a little shocked and just told them that I thought all skin colors are beautiful. They were a little shocked about my statement.

This evening, I had two small star classes with a brand new TA on her first day of the job. She was so nervous. All of us teachers carry around plastic picnic-ish baskets with all of our supplies. The TA's usually help us get supplies together for our preschool classes (I know, I'm spoiled right now!) and my TA dumped all of my supplies into another teacher's basket and filled mine up with the flashcards and puppets I needed for this evening's classes. Luckily, I realized what had happened before Claire had to go teach and I was able to retrieve my supplies and lesson plans before class started. The violent one's mother told me before class that her son's voice is sore, so please do not expect too much from him. However, the violent one's vocal chords were just fine as he started screaming at one of the relatively new girls to give over her shell necklace to him! It was that kind of evening. Lots of Roddy stickers were withheld this evening!

After work, I went to the gym. I know that the gym closes at 1o and was just starting to cool down around 9:45 when the lights started flickering on and off. I guess it was time to go! It's a lot different then 24 Hour Fitness, but more charming! I came out of the gym and saw a bunch of old men playing cards and eating plates of meat outside of a restaurant. Moments like that are pretty awesome.