he's a tramp, but they love him

i woke up to it being pretty warm in here at 27 C. what is that? somewhere in the high 70s? 80. then it was lovely all day until i got done teaching my first class at 6 and i walked by an open door and it was FREEEEZING. my thermostat says it's 18 in my room right now but it's reaaally cold outside. wunderground says 11 (52) right now and a high of 14 (57) tomorrow. BRRR.

i'm in a slump this week. i've been contemplating what to do after my contract is up in july and there seem to be too many options with no clear frontrunner.
be an au pair in europe
teach in taoyuan another year
teach in another city in taiwan
teach in another country
go to grad school for something environmental
try to find a job in austin
go back and get a teaching certificate and teach at a real school in the US
the problem is that i think i realized where my teaching limits lie. yesterday when my kids couldn't read and i didn't know how to help them, i remembered that i'm not a real teacher. we aren't trained, we don't know effective teaching strategies, and any success we have is pretty much based on luck and natural gifts and talents. ..so the idea of "teaching" more kids doesn't sound reaaaally good.

although today my classes were really good in terms of the level of fun. my first class had a lesson that involved some kids making a snow man, so i brought in this little blow up snowman we had in the dorm and had them write a new vocab word on a piece of paper, make a ball out of it and then they had to hit the snowman, pick up a ball and make a sentence with the word inside. it was fun/crazy.
in my second class, we're learning how to describe people and things so i gave them each a page of a magazine with someone on it and they had to describe their person while the class guessed which one it was. i think we were all excited to use materials that didn't come from the red book. it can get really old.
the lesson tonight is..
tom: who is that new boy?
sandy: which boy, tom?
tom: that fat boy
sandy: oh, that's billy briggs.
teacher: open your desk and give me that apple, billy!
billy: i'm sorry, miss williams. i am hungry.

awful!