'Sensei'

Okay, it should be 'teacher' but it sounds better in Japanese. That's what they call me at work (which I'm literally translating from Chinese): 'teacher' (like 'sensei') or 'Jessie teacher' (equivalent 'Miss Jessie'). It's weird hearing them call me that but I'll get used to it.

I taught my first classes on Tuesday. I got called in to sub for 4 classes at the last minute; luckily they called early enough to give me just enough time to get my butt down to the school. It was at the Song San branch and quite easily reached by bus or train. It's by Rao He Street Night Market (one of the most famous ones in Taipei) and Wufenpu.

Anyway, the classes went quite well I think. I was really conscious of slowing down my speech as I know I can speak really fast sometimes, but so far so good. I had an Intermediates class, a Beginners, an Advanced and another Intermediates. The classes are very conversational, mostly focused on vocabulary and getting the students to speak as much as possible, which was easy since I'm quite chatty anyway. :) The students seemed to all understand me - I managed to get them all to participate in the discussion at some point - and I only drew a couple of blank looks (they were all from the same student).

After one of the classes, two students - high schoolers - came up to me and asked which school I usually taught at. They were crestfallen to find out that I usually teach at the Keelung branch, which is too far for them to trek out to. They told me that I was their favourite teacher by far - they'd been attending this particular school for about a year - because I actually slowed down my speech and they could actually understand me. Woohoo, check me out! :D

I subbed another class today but no one showed up for class! It was funny; I just sat in the classroom and read Newsweek magazines and newspapers for two hours and got paid for it. I sub another 3 classes at Song San tomorrow.