Class was so boring yesterday!! I remember sitting there thinking... 'tick tock.tick.tock.tiiiicckkk.toooooccckkkkk". I'm also wholly aware I have no one to blame but me! Brutal!! I'm the one that was leading that snoozefest; although to soothe my Ego, the classrroom was intensely hot and i'm pretty sure by the time class ended we were all nearing heat stroke. There was a few changes to the regular group last night, I noticed when he walked in and I thought "whats this canadian looking guy doing in here?" He's Mike from Quebec. He's been "outside of Quebec" for 10 years and works mainly with french or spanish guys during the day at work, then comes home and his roommate is french too, so he never finds the need to use English. He decided to take this course to improve his conversational English, and he just moved to my class from Intermediate level 1. It was his first day yesterday, so I hope he finds the class enjoyable, so many of the students are funny and talkataive, i hope he ends up to be the same.
Another student, Ignace Jean Baptiste is from the Ivory Coast; he looks like Jermaine Dupri and talks like Michael Jackson. He has been away from my Tuesday class for 2 weeks, and it was nice to have him back. He had a lot to say on the topic of Cell phones. His cell phone is on 24/7, always on vibrate unless expecting an important call, he can call 74 countries for free, unlimited access to everything, but he doesn;t have a lot of phone numbers in his cell bc people call him instead of him calling them. Hmmm... I think i dated someone with similiar cell habits... no one asked what kind of business Ignace was handling.
We discussed cell phone ettiquette and home phone use. You'll be pleased to know it is not just a triat of north americans to screen calls, people all over the world are sucesptible to caller id paranoia!! Two students do not have answering machines nor caller ID; I said thats nice, then its always a surprise! Lien agree'd, except when it is a telemarketer, then she wonders why she got up. Hector does not own a cell nor answering machine, and does not have caller id. He says he doesn't like them bc people might not answer and they get picky and *fussy*. I think this might happen to Hector, so he doesn't like thinking his calls are the ones being screened... hey Hector, I wonder if I'm getting screened sometimes too buddy, it happens to the best of us my friend..
We talked about when you should not use a cell phone, Hector started talking about why some people need them. I am starting to see why Hector could occasionally be hard to *take*. We started talking about the youtube video with the cell phone at the gas pump and Jane mentioned you cannot use a microwave and a cell phone at the same time. She knows this bc she talks to her sister in Shanghai every morning for 2 hours, but her mom makes something in the microwave and she has to get off the phone bc it just shuts off.
Aside from that, there was nothing that really stuck out about last night. It was fun teaching them informal ways to say goodbye, and why we need to give reasons for ending conversations instead of just saying "ok. Goodbye". Its always a polite goodbye with an explanation; "ok, I've got to get going, dinners ready" ,"can I call you later, i'm just heading out the door" etc. Another social norm I didn't know was actually cultural. I taught them the phrase "catch you later". Only a few of them had heard this, and yes, some thought you literally would be *catching* them later.
Next week the topic is Relationships. fkn irony!!
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