Week Three, and YAY for Starbucks!

Well, I'm almost finished with my third week of teaching. It has been great so far.

One NOT great thing - we lost our babysitter! HELP!!!! We love her. She's a great lady with five of her own children. But, something happened to her last week which left her unable to care for as many children as before. Our family was one of the families whose children she had to let go. We are very sad! We're muddling through and trying to find some new child care. We've had lots of help from friends until we find someone permanent. This is a VERY stressful situation! Who wants to move to Texas to be our nanny? You know you want to!!!!!

Yesterday in class, the discussion was about the evolution of the American language from the time of the British colonists. It was very interesting. We discussed the way that not only words have evolved, but how we communicate as well. Namely, the cell phone. And Internet. E-mail, texting, im, you name it, we talked about it. We talked about how dependent the students are on their cell phones. I asked if it was more comfortable to send a text or to have a face-to-face conversation; by and large, they said texting. Interesting stuff. I asked them if they'd ever received a letter in the mail. Faces lit up, hands went up. They said they love getting snail mail. I told them about the "good old days" when we had to use pay phones or the office phone at school, and about getting and mailing several letters a week sometimes. At any rate, this digital age is here to stay. We talked about how even more advanced things may become. Some of my students suggested devices that will eliminate the need for face-to-face talking altogether. Perhaps it will be some type of telepathy sensor. One of my students blurted out, "Yeah, and it'll be like, 'Man, I can't believe you just thought that to me!' "

My students are fun!

Starbucks is awesome. Expensive, but awesome. This morning, I needed some coffee. In the worst way. And since there's a Starbucks on the way to work . . .
As the barista was handing me my tall, nonfat, decaff white chocolate mocha, she asked if I knew anybody who would like a tazo tea. They'd made one by mistake and didn't want to throw it out. I said, "I'll bet I could find somebody!" (and I did, one of the other English teachers) It's like Starbucks just lives to give me free stuff!!!!!