Life is full of Surprises: Teaching English

We have all made it through our first week of teaching English! It has been an eye opening experience so far, but has been amazing as well. The first night of adult classes was a little rough, but once we were over that hump things started to go much smoother. I am teaching Level 5, which is just one step down from the Advanced class. The majority of my students know a good bit of English, but we have a lot of work to do with grammar. Most of the students just want the opportunity to talk and have discussions though.

The other night was a great discussion topic: Is this cup half-full or half-empty? Two of our vocabulary words were pessimistic and optimistic, so we really got into talking about how to find an optimistic view even in a bad situation. My students really enjoyed this and were very excited by the end of class. It was great to talk to them and "pick their brains" to have them find something optimistic even in what they think is a pessimistic situation. For example one student at first replied with, "No water, really hot, and no electricity, what is there to be optimistic about?" Here is a photo of what happened last night during classes, we were sans electricity for about an hour or so, which made things quite interesting!

Don't you think the candles add great ambiance?

I am very excited for the conversations that we will be able to have during the coffeeshop coming up tonight. I only have 8 students in my class (at least that have come this past week) and it is great to start building relationships. We have had some interesting discussions about topics in class, but I am ready to venture off into other realms of topics that my students want to discuss. Thank you to all who have been pr'ying about our classes and time here, it is amazing to see how He is already working in all of us!

Here are some pictures from a restaurant . . . there is a reason we are here teaching English :)