My head knows...

So now that I have taught for a full month I will have a supervised lesson tomorrow, uffa... They do that every four weeks to insure that the quality of the lessons don't diminuish. In theory that's a good thing if only it didn't make me so nervous!!! I finally felt quite comfortable in the classroom and quite enjoyed teaching and my adrenaline level didn't quite get up so high any more but I already slept less well tonight and I keep thinking of revising my lesson plan for tomorrow worrying that it is too short or too much repetition etc... I hate when I do that because all the feedback I have had so far has been absolutely positive and my students have told me several times that they are quite happy with the way I teach. So there's really no reason at all to get anxious or to worry. A classical case of "my head knows but my emotions are stronger"...

Well, my parents will arrive on Friday and they will stay until Monday! The weather's supposed to be sunny but not as great as it has been. I'm up at Vigera right now and Sunday we did an hour or two climbing the river bed of the Ticino, which is still pretty small up here (the source is in the mountains of St. Gottardo) and runs in a sort of a canyon. We found some rocks that seem to be fossils and lots of sandy beaches and fish. Yesterday we went for a hike up to Carì, through pine woods and rocky fields and little huts and fountains. I got so tanned up here I can't imagine getting any more tanned in summer!!!

Anyway, later we will return to Bellinzona and Nico's aunt will bring her bunny which will stay with us for two weeks because she is moving to another house. Today I also had an email from my penpal Marta. She writes to me in German and I write her in Italian and we help each other correcting mistakes and learning about the other's culture. She is from Rome but lives at Florence. Writing in English I keep thinking that soon I will need a tandem partner who speaks English because I can definitely see how my English deteriorates. I used to be able to speak and write like I did in German but now it's really difficult not to use Italian grammar and words...

My class

I like sitting at the wooden kitchen table preparing my lessons. I imagine every of my students how they will deal with my little tasks and challenges and I know already who will volunteer for what and what kind of exercises they like. And I create word cards and prepare little games and cubes and quizzes. They are a wonderful class, very talkative and open, funny and motivated. Tomorrow night I will take the train to Lugano and then the bus and when I arrive at Naronco I walk into the office and they all greet me and ask me how I am and we will chat for a couple of minutes until one of them says, "daiiii, iniziamo!!" and they all walk into the little room and we begin to work with words and phrases and laugh and learn. And I know they have been working all day and they must be tired but they are wonderful students and I just love teaching them my language even if I have arrived at a point where I do prefer speaking Italian. But I know that the classroom is where I want to be and teaching is what I want to do and sometimes that seems so strange because I remember so well being a student myself...