martedì 18 settembre 2007

Il corso all'ospedale

Well, I don't know why I got nervous on Monday, after all I have already been teaching adults for a while. The class at the hospital is very friendly and open. There is one doctor and a lot of nurses and health technicians. Their biggest problem is that they believe German to be much more difficult than other languages.

Today I also met some of my kids in town when I was on my way to the station. There is an American girl who is very open and friendly and I got a chance to change a few words with her.

The kids from that class, however, are still having difficulties staying quiet for an entire lesson. That is, quiet enough so that I don't have to yell and that others can work with concentration. After almost 10 years at public schools they aren't yet used to working quietly. Sometimes it frustrates me that I have to punish them all in order to do something. But a lot of times (almost all of the times) it is not one student talking but a group of them.

The first vocabulary test, on the other hand, went great! Lots of sixes (equivalent to a German 1 and an American A) and fives.

Today, during the break at noon I went down to the lake. All the colors were pastell like and the lake was placid and still. It was very humid and I had only just finished eating when the sky started grumbling. I looked up and knew right away, this one was a fast one (living in the Alps you learn these things rapidly). So I started running up the hill (at least some sport...) and right after I reached the door of my school, the sky broke open and a wall of water came down. Just like that. Boom. The nuns came running controlling all the windows and it turned into a nice little thunderstorm.

We had already had a thunderstorm last night that woke me a few times and one of my students hadn't slept at all.

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