Hi ho, hi ho...

... it's back to work I go. It wasn't so bad, actually. I taught two lessons today. The first was an elementary student, the mother of one of my former students, from Turkey. She's really low level, but she's trying very hard, and since she's here with her 4 kids and doesn't speak English very well at all, this will be a good social experience for her, if nothing else. I asked her about friends, and she said that she takes care of her kids and doesn't have time for friends! Hopefully, if her English improves, she can change that.

The second lesson was an academic writing class, with one German girl and one Chinese boy, both teenagers preparing to take the International Baccalaureate exam. We're starting with sentence-level skills and moving up through paragraphs and eventually on to essays. Worked with word choice today--for example, correcting the sentence, "Braille is a system that presents letters by dots."

So a pretty easy day. While I was on holiday, the school changed things around, so the rooms are arranged more reasonably. Before, the principal had an office in the biggest room in the building (ha!). That room is now the teachers' room, and she's moved into one of the other big classrooms. Of course, the door to the teachers' room is blocked on the left by the output tray from the photocopier (hovering in front of the dor waiting to be ripped off by passersby) and on the right by the chair at a computer desk. I do love the British. (Have I told you about their door-mounting or light fixture-installing skills? They somehow *always* seem to mount doors so thatthey swing in the most inconvenient way possible and install light switches so that they're either *behind* the inconveniently-placed doors or across the room--or sometimes even in a different room altogether.)

SO back to it. It was a really lovely day, actually. I only worked until 12:30 today, and I got to cycle home in the sunshine, to the sound of spring birds and busily nesting ducks! Felt very lucky today. Still putting off putting in those seeds, as it's still fairly chilly, though. Probably just being a massive wimp.