I've been really bad about blogging lately (if you haven't noticed.) it's combination of being very busy and also being very lazy about blogging. Ya know, I really don't know how people can blog for a living or how people enjoy running daily blogs! They're tiring! (Though, I am sure these people know how to type with more than two fingers haha)
So let's see- what's happened this past week? Last week was my first week of teaching English at base5. I teach beginner level students (though they know more English than I had assumed.) My students range from about eight years old to about 30 years old. However, the mode is definitely around 12. Teaching English is really a lot of fun, and definitely a good break between the hospital. I Iearned that I'm also pretty good at it. (Future teacher?? Nah.) Some grammar we taught them was irregular last tense verbs; when to use articles such as a, an, and the; when to not use articles; and different prepositions for time such as ago, past, before, etc.. They really struggle with the articles. They always add "the" in front of things, like "the New York City." With practice, they will get better though. Some vocab we taught them was extreme sports, landscapes, weather, extreme weather, and traveling words. We played a lot of games like pictionary and jeopardy to reinforce what the words. We would play jeopardy against the intermediate level students. There were three teams of the intermediate kids since their class was so large, while our class made up on team. Not bragging or anything, but my beginner level students won most of those games!!!! I was also really surprised at the creativity of their team names. My team named itself "game over" and "play again." How good is that!? The other teams named themselves "piña colada", and "forever alone." LOL. During the hour or so after lunch, we watch American tv with them. The first day, the group decided to show "how I met your mother." The entire episode was about sex and I have never been more embarrassed. Hopefully, they couldn't understand the English anyway.
So- I've always heard from my family members who are teachers that teachers will always remember the name of the students who were pains in the asses in their classes. The average student's name you forget with time, as well as the really smart student's. But the clowns or pains- you'll never forget. I totally understand that now!!!! There's this girl Beatrice in my class. She's one of the girls who rolls with the boys and avoids other girls at what seems like all costs. She sits there with her hair in her face and her back super slumped, and I don't think I have ever seen this girl smile. Also, she refuses to speak in class. You ask her a question, and she sits there silently pretending she doesn't know any English. Then you keep telling her that she needs to answer the question, and she'll call her boy friends over to translate what I'm saying to her. She pretends sensors by understand or can't form the answer to the question herself. But this chic KNOWS ENGLISH. She wins every game and hands in assignments with perfect grammar. Ugh she is so frustrating!!! And then we'll do writing assignments in class. She'll sit there not writing a thing, but as soon as all the other students leave the room, she'll do her assignment in two seconds. Maybe she's shy or something? Maybe she thinks the act makes her look cool to her guy friends? Who knows? I made slightly more progress with her at the end of the week though because I would sit there for five minutes until she answered my question. So eventually, she would.
Another thing I've realized is what a pain in the ass I was in high school. Haha I was always that girl who got good grades, but talked the entire class. My Spanish teacher used to send me to sit outside in the hall. I remember once I was sent out twice in one class. That was a low point. She sent me out a lot with my friend Kyle- because we were always talking with each other. But I never understood why she did that. We just sat in the hall then continuing to talk freely. Gosh, I was so annoying. Sorry, señora Ginsberg.
Another nice thing about teaching is that I get to spend time hanging out and talking with the other Atlantis project fellows. We don't get to do that at the hospital, and I live in a homestay so I don't really get to see them until the weekend or if we go out at night. And since I am a lazy sack of suds when it comes to going out at night, that's not too often.
Overall, base5 was great. It was refreshing to go back to the hospital on Monday though.
