I live in space.

I was really tired this morning. At school I called Mrs. Yoon to ask her about Matt and Tanya coming. She confused me--something about there weren't enough students for an advanced class so maybe we'd do a private group lesson instead. Huh?? Where? When? How? Who? Give me details!

The first class was too crazy; the next was fine except for Tomas. At 4 I was on the computer and talked with Matt some, then did more evaluations.

At 5 Sally and Luby entertained me with a story from their other academy. Apparently they go there in the evening for several hours. After they finished one night they both left quickly so that the teacher/owner wouldn't try to keep them later. However, Sally lives near the academy so he called her apartment and told her to come back to finish studying (another hour, until 11 PM) while Luby didn't have to go back because she lives farther away. Another day apparently the academy teacher told Sally's older brother that she hadn't done her homework, so her brother's friends tease her every time they see her. She's the kind of person that makes a big deal out of things, so they probably enjoy watching her reaction. As she told the story Sally made the situation seem so terrible. I tried hard not to laugh, but couldn't help it--Luby was laughing too. The chapter in the book talked about jobs, and they said that teaching English is a safe job. I told them, "No, it's a dangerous job!" and went on to tell them about Andy last year and how he would hit and kick me. They were absolutely shocked and told me to hit him back and call his mother. I explained that it was last year, and he's better now (and not in my class!).

At 6 PM there were several new students, so I had them introduce themselves--5 sentences from each person. One boy was less than descriptive when he said, "I live in space." Linda is in that class now, so she and Jenny spent too much time whispering. I'll have to change their seats.

At 7 PM I gave my "You're in a high level now so must speak only English in my class" speech. They're only in Pink 1, but did a good job of remembering to speak English. At the beginning of class I gave them some helper phrases like, "How do you spell _____?" or "What does ____ mean?" to use when they don't know something.

At the break I had a leisurely dinner, then helped Mina's 7 PM class with their homework. They had to translate a whole story, and they're a pretty low-level class (Best Friends 2). They were working together and kept running back and forth to the online dictionary (since it was easier than looking up English words in the regular dictionary). Not that I know Korean that well, but I could explain some of the words in a way that they could understand, and sometimes recognize the correct Korean word when they said it.

In the 8:30 class they were OK, but a few minutes before class ended Glen's handphone rang. Then less than a minute later it rang again and he ANSWERED THE PHONE IN CLASS. That is about the rudest and most disrespectful thing that a student could do. He only talked for a few seconds, but STILL--don't answer it, just turn it off!! I told Glen to give me his handphone. At that point I only planned on keeping it until the end of class then giving him a stern lecture before returning it. However, he refused to give it to me. He probably thought that I would keep it for an extended period of time like most middle-school teachers would. His refusal only made me angrier, so I told him to follow me to the teachers' room, where I told him to sit down at my desk and write "I will not answer my handphone in class" 20 times. When we entered the teachers' room he started stuttering a combination of Korean and English. That made me even angrier (if you can imagine) because he has absolutely no ability in English despite many years of study. He doesn't try but always goofs off in class. The Korean teachers asked if they could help, but he couldn't even explain himself to them in Korean. Something about it being his mother on the phone and she was meeting him downstairs or something. Too bad, WRITE!! Mina called his mother to explain what happened and that he's not doing too well in class. The fact that he is persistently 20 or more minutes late to my class EVERY day because of another academy certainly doesn't help him, either!!