Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Another weekend...

Well, looks like I'm falling into a pattern of doing something different every weekend. This past weekend, I headed out to a ball game with Jude and the Suji crew. It was lots of fun. We watched the LG Twins play someone else in red jerseys. Yeah, I'm not into ball here... or at home for that matter... but it was fun nonetheless. It wasn't "technically" my first time at a baseball game (since I went to an Expos game in Montreal when I was in grade 8), but it was my first "real" baseball game (since I spent most of my time at the arcade and hacksacking outside the arena when I was in Montreal).

There was a lot of testosterone flying around at the game. Afterwards, we headed on over to Itaewon where we went to a Canadian bar and several others. It was great. On the subway over to Itaewon from the ballfield we ended up singing funk-barbershop-quartet like foreign fools. There was a round or two of "Barrett's privateers" in there as well... it was good times for all.

On an unrelated note, I headed back to the gym yesterday and today (Tuesday). The intense muscle pain from last week subsided and I'm back in the game... at least until my resolve dissolves. I woke up today feeling great and like I had all the energy in the world. I'm going to try and get to bed again early so I can get a good rest and store up some of that energy. It should be good!

My kids were great today. Every once in a while, all my classes come into focus for one day and they're really fabulous to teach (it's kind of like an astral alignment or other rare events where serendipity is flying high). I'm starting to enjoy some of my students a lot more too - I'm developping a soft spot for the kids who used to cause me grief.

Another funny thing happened today - I called a student to do "phone testing" - a series of questions to test the students' listening skills. I proceeded to ask the student on the other line all of the required questions for her level (7 in all - about 5 minutes worth of conversation). It was only after the last question when she did not understand the question ("If you were an animal, what animal would you be?") that I clarified with "If Naomi was an animal, what would she be?", and the voice on the other line answered "I'm Jeremy". Turns out, I had been talking to another one of my students - Naomi's brother in a much lower grade level. It all made sense why she sounded different, got all her questions wrong, and wasn't understanding much of what I was saying. Ooops. I think they should have phone testing to test the teachers on their powers of perception....!

Anyway, see you all again soon. Check out the photos!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Ben, Juanita here. How you holding up? Your stories are great to read...ahhh...reminds me of the good old days of making a fool of myself in other foreign countries. By the way, there ARE hashes in Saskatoon...I forgot about them completely until you brought it up. :) Mail me sometime...my life could use some excitement. (^-^)v