Adventures in Englishing

The topic for my fourth year students this week was personal descriptions. So, I decided to make them describe their ideal partner. Is talking relationships the low hanging fruit for high schoolers? Absolutely. Guess who doesn't care at all. My boys were writing away with a concentration they usually reserve for trying to send text messages under the table without my knowledge.

I got a fair number of somewhat cliche answers (She should be rich. she must be a good cook.) as well as the somewhat predictable (She should be short and American. Her name must be Rachel.) -- and no, I don't give extra credit for describing me. But at least we had some laughs about it. In the end, a fun classroom is a productive classroom. Especially for EFL, where the students are usually quite nervous and hung up on perfecting their grammar. 60% of my job is just getting these kids out of their own way, so they can start just talking and using English naturally, and I will shamelessly leverage any sort of topic to do that. Plus, you know, it keeps me amused.

Anyhow, quite a few of them surprised me by describing their current girlfriend as their ideal woman. I got quite a few variations on the "She's quite pretty but what I like most is her personality" theme, which totally melted my heart. (How many American boys are that mature in high school?) Perhaps the czechs will win me over yet, although they do lack the style of Korean namjas. Also, namja kinda sounds like ninja, which is a plus. [Namja being korean for dude.]

Now, I'm off to Bulgaria (a sentence I never thought I'd be writing) for a long weekend with Mark. Should be an excellent mini-adventure. Sometimes I think about how awesome and absurd my life is, but I still can't appreciae the full extent of its ridiculousness. That will probably sink in at some point. For now, the sun is shining and my kindle is charged. Life is good.