students

I really do work.
4 days a week, some days 6 classes.
And when your students look at you with varying levels of incomprehension for 6 hours straight, it can seem like a thankless day.
Sometimes, I feel more like an actor than a teacher. Like today when I went over the first few lines of a poem
"There was an old woman who swallowed (finger pointing down throat)a fly(jazz fingers as a fly)
"I don't know why she swallowed a fly(huge shoulder shrug and massive intonations)
"Perhaps she'll die(doing the pose from the painting, Scream)
"There was an old woman who swallowed a spider(hands walking like a spider)
"Who whiggled and jiggled and tickled(I gyrate around the room) inside her.
"She swallowed the spider to catch the fly..."
They like the "whiggled and jiggled and tickled" part the best.

My older students tend to be more self-conscious, so I had them write me a letter to gauge their language skills.
Some of the letters sound like advertisements in the personals:
" I am tall and slim. I am quiet, quick-tempered and sociable."
Most of them say something about me:
"It's a pity that we will be doing english with you only this year because you are a good teacher and I like learn english with you."
"I really like your english classes because it`s a new experience for me.Since I was just a kid I`d liked english ,but now i love english.I don`t like so much english gramar but I like comunication"
"I'm verry happy to learn english from an american people."

So this is what "the american people" in Romania is doing, as of late.