At least they all finished

So finally, after much writing, fretting, waiting, and a typhoon, my Level 0 class had their first Unit exam today.  Or at least most of it.  They'll be doing the Listening portion in the morning.  Everyone finished, no one talked, and as far as I could tell, no one was cheating.  One guy kept falling asleep, but that's beyond my ability to control.  Sitting up, but totally head-hanging-loose-mouth-open-for-minutes-at-a-time sleeping.  I don't know how people do that.  I can barely fall asleep sitting up when I want to, much less when I'm trying to concentrate on a task.  I guess it's a gift.  Or maybe my grammar section was just that boring.  :)

My other two classes were not so stellar.  They're both Level 2 and for the first few weeks we've been doing some Orientation kind of stuff because it's a General Education class.  Needless to say, now that they can no longer get by with slacking off and the real work of the semester is starting, they're getting kind of whiny.  Lots of sighing and mumbling going on.  I have to suppress the urge to remind them that this is college and it's not going to get any easier and the harder they work, the more they will learn.  

I try to keep the love in my "tough love" though.  This evening before my night class one student was telling me that she is taking six classes in addition to working a full time job and that she normally has another class after mine, and we get done at 8pm.  I have another student who is about to fail out of my afternoon class for too many absences because she works the night shift at one of the casinos and can only sleep for a couple hours before she's supposed to come to my class.  Geez Louise, and I thought I was working hard.  About all I can say is, "I'm sorry, that sounds really difficult, but I have to be fair to the students who are attending class and doing the work on time."  It's so hard to accept that some of your students are just going to fail, or nearly fail, no matter what you do.  I really don't like it. 

So I'm going to spend some time this weekend trying to think of some things to make the lessons a little more fun, if possible.  I'm also going to incorporate a couple of the free online programs from my thesis handbook into the assignments to see if the students like it.  Plus, one of my head teachers is going to observe one of my classes next Friday and so I want to be sure I've given that day some extra effort.  (I mean I put effort into every day, but I don't want to just be doing bookwork or something equally dull.) 

And speaking of dull, no photos in this boring post.  That won't do.  I can't show you photos of my students, even though they are super cute.  So here are some things out of the random rainy day pile.
 

Beth noticed this little guy in our office.  Sorry he's so blurry.  He was tiny and camera shy.  

And I took this footage while waiting for a bus transfer.

Saw this on my way to the acupuncture clinic.  The Asian take on a VW bus.  I think it was a Subaru?  Can you see that it even has whitewall tires with hot pink trim?  Wow.

Wednesday was another holiday, which means that my eating out tendencies often get thwarted because my regular places are closed or full.  Since we were out of bread and the places I buy bread were also out, I decided to try some new pastries instead.  There are a ton of little bakeries with interesting pastries here.  The round one is egg and ham, the seedy one is coconut cream (but was actually more like coconut paste inside), and the braid one they called a Danish stick.  All it had inside was raisins, so it is in no way a Danish by my standards, but it was still really good.  I've been wanting to get another sweet taro bun, but have not seen them lately. 

This is a dog video for Beth.  There are a ton of pet stores here.  There are also a ton of loud yappy dogs, and many of them live in or around our building.  I'm not sure where exactly, but multiple times a day they get all riled up and the sound is unbelievably loud.  Granted, our apartment building is an echo chamber, but still.  So I don't know if they're down the hall or in the next building, but I do know that something often upsets them around 2am.