The Lurgy

The Lurgy. It's been going around our school for the last few weeks and I am now it's latest victim. The lurgy is just English slang for "a cold" but it sounds much more awesome. None of the local teachers have caught it yet. The local teachers are telling me to stop drinking cold water. Dude, maybe I should! (Although hot water is not refreshing after a work out... I've learned that the hard way!) They are much stronger than the Westerners!

My teaching weekend was long and mostly good. I had a great open door class on Saturday morning. The parents left the room smiling and I got to have some small (translated) chats with some of them.

One of my older classes had a special life club class. Usually, we have to teach a planned curriculum, but this month they are letting us choose our own. I did a music theme life club where we had discussions about some of their favorite musical artists. The students had to do some Internet research on their favorite artist (the caveat was that their favorite song had to be in English), present the information in front of the class, and then show a music video of their favorite songs. They were really excited about it, but unfortunately the whole class only picked three different artists: Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" was the big hit of the hour!

This morning, I taught my obnoxious parent small star class. This group of students only comes once a week for an hour and a half class and I only see them every other week. I had an open door with the class about a month ago that went very poorly. Most of the students hadn't come to the class for over the entire summer, and then they all showed up for the open door class. A few of the boys are really into pretending they have machine guns, which I understand is a really normal developmental stage for lots of boys, but it's just not something I want to encourage in a classroom! Anyway... the parents were upset by how poorly their students' behavior was in the class and have requested an American male teacher to take over the class since they had an American male teacher before I arrived. It's really disheartening to go into a classroom where the parents don't like you just based on your gender. There are a few other boys in the class that are delightful, and the girls are lovely, but really all it takes is the ring leader boy to rile them all up, speaking Chinese at lightening speed, so I have no clue what mutiny he is planning in that little head of his. Anyway... Laura has been helping me with some student management in that class, and it has been helping, but it is still not a fun way to begin a Sunday morning!

Tonight, I went out to dinner with a few friends from work who were ok with me and my lurgy. We often go to this awesome Chinese restaurant where they always politely have to remind us that it is closing time. Claire joined us later in the evening and she said the wait staff just nodded at her and took her to us! Love it!

Captain's Log: 27 Weeks!