Todo bem...

So, my first week of teaching has gone surprisingly well: knock on wood, it has gone better than expected. During the day my classes are full with teenagers varying in age from fourteen to eighteen and at night my students are older professionals. My classes vary from small classes of six students to classes of seventeen students.

No matter how many times I tell them not to, my students still insist upong calling me "teacher." Even the adult students. Imagine how surprised I was when a forty year old man walked into my classroom, picked up a desk and placed it only a few inches away from my feet. "Teacher," he said, "What will we learn today?" Or when I was at the gym and I heard "Hello teacher" coming from a student running on the treadmill directly next to me. I have told my students numerous times to call me Diane, (or Diane-E as they say it) but to tell you the truth, I am beginning to like being called "teacher."

There have been some minor communication problems such as the time when a student asked for water and I thought he wanted me to give him the classroom tape recorder. Or the time an older male stated what sounded to me like, "I am Leonard and I am po-leesh." I asked him when he had immigrated over from Poland to Brazil and he looked at me with a confused expression on his face. "Were you born in Poland?" I asked. "No" he replied. "But you said you were polish." "No, po-leese officer," he explained.

At times I feel like I am an actor, or a clown, putting on a show for my students, because the only way to get students to understand certain words or phrases is to act them out or do my best visual representation of the word on the board. My facial expressions and sound effects probably seem ridiculous, but they have to be in order to get the point across. How can I possibly explain the phrase "the whole nine yards" without using other common idioms such as "over the top"? Does that phrase even make sense? Make sense- what does that phrase even mean? How can I define the word mean as in angry without saying "Mean means..."? How can I explain what meditation is without getting on the floor Indian style, closing my eyes and making a hmm...noise?

There are times when I find myself questioning my own use of the English language. Some words are harder to define than I thought, especially when I am limited on the words that I can use. And grammar lessons are the toughest. How can I possibly explain the difference between "you ate dinner" and "you have eaten dinner." The closer I look, the more I realize what a ridiculous language English really is.

As Rachel and I spend more and more time together, we are beginning to notice a change in the way that we speak to each other.

"Rachel, what time are you going to go to the gym/sports club/place where people exercise, today?" I ask, speaking slowly and making sure that each word and syllable is fully pronounced, adding in extra synonyms to emphasize my point.

"I am not sure," she replies, pausing between each small word, conjugations completely eliminated.