No, thank YOU

Day 2 of teaching: still very challenging, but also encouraging.  I reported to the office at noon again today in order to fill out some paperwork, which I then had to bring to HR.  2 metro rides and a million signatures later, I headed back to the Mayakovskaya office of EF (this is where I work.  EF is well known around Moscow and has many locations.  This location is named  after the metro stop it is closest to...about a 5 minute walk away) with apx. 20 mins to plan my first lesson for the day.  I had another group of intermediate teens, but what I learned from yesterday combined with a totally different situation led to a pretty successful class.  Unlike yesterday's group (which I teach again tomorrow...hopefully it goes better), this was the first class of the semester for these students, and none of them knew each other beforehand; this meant no side convos, no note passing, and no giving me a hard time for being the new guy.  I also learned to have a more set structure and incorporate more fun stuff.  After doing intros, we covered taking a gap year before/during/after college and talked about all of the negatives and positives associated with it, in addition to different types (travel, internship, volunteer, etc).  After this we worked on phrasal verbs, which was a little difficult as I myself barely have a grasp on the matter.  I sprinkled in 2 games, 2 videos, a random debate, and some homework that I scheduled while they were re-watching one of the videos, and ended at 649pm - right on time.  As the kids were leaving the room, several of them thanked me for the lesson.  Thanked me! As opposed to running out of the room as quickly as possible...I basically wanted to hug every one of them.

Immediately after this group, I sat-in and somewhat co-taught Sheila's adult group, which has been together since August.  Sheila is an older English woman who has been in Russia for over a decade, and she's being moved to a different school (which she found out about only upon getting to work this morning and was not pleased about...luckily she didn't take it out on me and encouraged the students not to either).  We spent most of the time going over homework, so I'm not sure how I'm going to pull off a 2 hour lesson on Thursday, but we'll see.  The group is good, if a little quiet, and I look forward to teaching them...I just hope I can answer their tricky grammar questions and stimulate some good conversations!

After work, Chien and I took the metro home together, bought a few groceries, and hung out while cooking ourselves dinner.  Quiet end to a busy day, which is about all I could handle.  And if there's anything you, my dear readers, would like to see on this blog that I haven't gotten to yet, please let me know in the comments section! I aim to please. Or at least...I'll see what I can do.  That's all for today!