If I ever end up looking like this woman, please, I beg of you... KILL ME!The big news is, I started my new job(s) this past week. After that whole B.P. debacle left me out of work from April until June, then summer break, and then my move, it's been a loong time out of the classroom! I was getting a little crazy from boredom. Now I have two jobs teaching English at two locatons. One is for inlingua, an international language group that has locations everywhere, and the other is a technical school (hochschule) in a neighboring town. Total hours a week? 14. That's right, an overwhelming 14 hours. Better than nothing, I guess!
The thing is, it's hardly like working at all, it's so easy. Basically I teach kindergarten English to adults at inlingua. Pretty uneventful, although my students are very cool and have great personalities. The wierdest thing is that after every class, they invite me out for drinks. I always politely decline, something about having cocktails with students wierds me out. Could be all those American law suits and teachers in jail :)
At the Hochschule I teach "Business English" to groups of 20 kids in their early twenties. They all speak pretty good English already, and peppered me with questions the first day: "Do you know Eminem?," "Do you like 'The Terminator?'," "Are you married?" Wait, am I in high school again? It was just like the first day of school in SHS. Then they tried to prove to me how in tune they are to American culture with such notable quotes as: "Tell it to the hand," and "Yeeeaah! Oh-kay!"
The strangest moment of the first day was when class ended, and the room was suddenly filled with banging noises. I looked up and saw that all of the kids were knocking on their tables. I must have looked like a freak, because I was thinking, "What the FUCK?" I was so confused I looked at some kids and asked, "Somebody wanna tell me what's up with the knocking?" They said it's what they do instead of clapping. All I could imagine was a bunch of Germans in a theater, knocking on arm rests after the ballet or something. Weird. Of course I asked Eric about it later and he looked at me like I was nuts.
Eric: "How did you not know that?"
Me: "You never told me."
Eric: "I thought everyone knew that. Duh. At the end of a really good presentation or lecture they knock. Not at a show, dumbass."
Me: "So they liked my class?"
Eric: "Well, now it's just a habit, so they do it all the time. Not a big deal."
Me: "Oh."
So maybe the class sucked, and ok, that's my paraphrasing of the conversation of course. You all know he's really not a mean smart-ass...
