First week of school- Erin

Well, I survived my first week of school and so far I absolutely love it! The commute does kinda suck but I just read my books so it is not that bad. I thought I was going to be extremely overwhelmed because I had 24 different classes but a lot of the classes are the same so I get to teach the same lesson a lot which is nice cause that is less lesson plans that I have to make. The first day with all of the girls was a lot of fun, I did a couple activities so that I could learn some things about them and then I allowed them to ask questions about me. They all wanted to know if I had a boyfriend, I swear every girl asked that. Some of them even asked how many boyfriends I had! I was really nervous to teach the class full of teachers but it went very well. The one class is a basic level teachers class and they know some English but they are very sweet. For the first class I wanted a chance for us to get to know each other better and I wanted to get some feedback from them on what they wanted to learn. I introduced myself to them as Erin and they all kind of looked at each other (my name is extremely hard to pronounce here) so then I wrote Air-in on the board and in unison they all started saying it over and over practicing saying my name, it was pretty funny. I had a bunch of different categories(introducing yourself, shopping, talking on the phone, ordering food, going to the doctor....) on the board and I tried to explain all of the categories to them and told them to pick what they wanted to learn the most this year. That didn't go as well as I planned, they kind of just let me talk at first and stared at the bored. Not knowing where to go from there I asked them, "Do you understand me? Is this okay?" And then one of them replied while laughing, "No thees is too much wook." I guess I scared the crap out of them because they thought they had to learn all of the categories that I had listed on the board and didn't understand that I wanted them to pick what they wanted to learn most out of the list. I explained myself better and they understood better the second time me so they started shouting out different categories and kept shouting out, "NO HOMEWOOK." It was really funny because they are all grown ups and the one thing they are nervous about is me giving them homework but I promised them that I would not give them any homework. For the rest of the class I had them introduce themselves to me and the class and that went very well. I think it is going to be a fun class. Right after the basic teacher class is my advanced teacher class and I only have 3 teachers in that class that speak much better English than I do. That class was a lot easier to talk to and they wanted to learn swear words!! Ha! So now I have to come up with a lesson plan on English swear words. That is going to be a very uncomfortable class for me. Whenever I walk down the hall now and see a teacher that I teach they greet me with, "Hello teachuh," I keep telling them to call me Erin, it's just so funny because they are all older than me calling me teacher. I think teacher is easier to pronounce than Erin. I will keep you updated on any funny teaching stories.