happy first day of spring!

This week, my 4th to last teaching, has been really good. Yesterday two students voluntarily attended my class, despite the fact that this was not their assigned week. When I asked them why (normally kids like to CUT class, not attend it) they said they had nothing else to do. I was really flattered that they chose to sit in my classroom when they could have been at the cafe, library, study hall, or just hanging out with their friends.

Then today a girl actually laughed at my accent when I said a word in French, so I threw up a whole bunch of difficult English words on the board and made her say them (south, truth, etc). The whole class was laughing, and it felt so good to joke around with them. Later I walked down the hall with some of my secondes, talking about how hot Patrick Dempsey and Josh Holloway are, and exchanging the French and American names for TV shows.

Another class said that they're going to bake a cake for our last session, in three weeks. I just feel like everything is going really well, and that I finally have a good relationship with most of my students. We tease each other and spend a lot of time laughing. It sucks that there are some of them who I won't have again, and the rest I'll only have once or maybe twice more. It took so long to get them to respect, never mind like, me, but now it feels really good.

One of my adult students, aka the hot pilot, told me that he finds it difficult to speak like I do because he can't make Ts sound like Ds. He's referring to the way I say "buddon" instead of "button." I then had to explain about my dad's New York accent, and that he should NOT imitate that part of my speech! How embarrassing.

Anna flew to New York a few hours ago, to meet with her potential PhD program. That means that my big plans tonight include hand-washing and finishing The Queen on my computer. It's too bad that the weather has turned miserable, although it'll make it cosy to be in my apartment, with a nice cup of grog.