January 9th, 2016

6:35am

Quick point for clarification: I said I didn't have water in my apartment, yet I took a shower- that is to say, I haven't trusted the tap water enough to drink or rinse my toothbrush with. So I didn't have drinking water, but yes, I've got plenty of running water.

Yesterday was verging on routine: no pre-work trips downtown (I assume that was downtown), no errands to run... er, well, I should have run an errand or two, but I didn't think about them until it was too late.

Instead I just slept in a bit, wrote about my day, and leisurely walked to work where, after seeing I had about 14 minutes or so until the time I had to report in, I actually went and got myself a cup of watermelon pieces for breakfast. As far as breakfasts here go, that's probably as healthy as it gets. Returning to work with my breakfast in tow, Alona told me we weren't really supposed to eat at our stations. I laughed and said I wasn't even sure I was allowed to walk it out of the Food Bazzar area.

Then she had another interesting thing to tell me: my VIP student from the other day is actually the wife of the guy that owns the business. It seems if she didn't like me, that's it, I'd be out of here. No worries, she seemed to be on board with charming ol' Isaac (mmm, it's good she didn't see my first English Corner...). I was considering mentioning something the next time we have a class together, like "You didn't tell me you were in charge here!" but I think not. Dangerous waters, best leave well enough alone and play dumb, I'm great at that here.

My first class was on stress and intonation, and how we use it to impart information faster to each other than a non-native speaker may be ready to listen for. As this lesson includes some slang, and I had talked to Bradley about slang the day before, I invited him to sit in on the class. I doubt that was exactly kosher, I don't know if each class is paid for individually or not, but it's probably like giving him a free class. Plus it was material that was perhaps more advanced than he was ready for- but he's a very enthusiastic student, one of the most likely students to offer up answers in class, and that deserves something in recompense.

I sort of glossed of the idea of finding stressed syllables in a sentence, because I have no business teaching that. Trying, and failing, to do that is what hit me so bad in my Shakespeare class. But the most pertinent points of the lesson were straightforward enough: that the information imparted in a sentence is different based on the stress, and that is the reason you may have a hard time keeping up with a native speaker- while you're trying to decipher an entire sentence worth of information, the only thing anyone else needs to hear is that one new piece of information. The example sentence we discussed was "I have been studying journalism." and there were four different questions, each prompting for a different key piece of information that would change the stress, and the kind of information, that you'd listen for. "Has your brother been studying journalism?" "Will you be studying journalism?" Have you been teaching journalism?" "Have you been studying chemistry?"

I thought that was a great example, it made a lot of sense, was easy to follow, and imparted some very useful information. Great. Then we practiced the addition of um, you know, that raised inflection sound to make a question? So that, basically anything could be a question? But then one guy was confused because the sentence wasn't written with a proper question format? With, like, an "Is it" at the front, or something? But I told him we were just talking about the inflection? And so he was right, but that wasn't what we were talking about?

It was a good time.

And then I had my second English Corner.

This time I didn't bother with the videos or screen shots or whatever- the projector still isn't working. And, like anything, it's important to have a kind of philosophy going in. For my first English Corner my philosophy was "show an interesting video with particular vocabulary in mind to teach" and, though it wasn't entirely my fault, it didn't go over so well. It's no good to have a class like this be something I dread, I needed a new philosophy, such that I could enjoy this English Corner business and make it easy. I briefly considered asking almost exactly that question to someone "what philosophy are we going for here" or "what is the goal of the English Corner" but I felt it was a bit late in the game to ask that, and honestly, I think I've heard any answer they'd have given before. So here's how I approached it: "Pick a topic. Just talk about it. They just want to hear a naturalized speaker. Slow it down a bit. Ask some questions. Ask FOR some questions." Specifically, and most reassuringly, my philosophy was "They just want to hear a naturalized speaker." I talked about the different methods of public transit in Toronto- and it went amazing! I was in far more control of the material than the previous occasion, and I hit on a topic that I promised to talk about in the future: Mayor Ford. Whoo boy.

I had two hours after that until my next class, but I spent a little time asking extra questions from the English Corner people (which meant I was actually intruding on someone else's time to teach in that space, one of the Chinese teachers, who, after I apologized, said "thanks for taking some of my burden" which is an antiquated phrasing, but that's cool. Ah, and then I was approached by a guy that was immigrating (er, emmigrating?... *sigh* I don't know man) he's coming to live in Canada! In Montreal! So he wanted to ask me some questions. The only problem was that if I didn't find some laundry stuff in this two hour window, I wasn't getting it tonight, and I kind of need it... the hour mark passed, the guy left, and I was set to, if nothing else, eat. Steve and Bradley invited me to come eat with them, and Alona came too. We went to the Food Bazzar area, where the first thing I grabbed was a dessert type of thing that I'd been meaning to try for a while- I was told it was made of sweet potato, it looked like a sort of mashed potato with some sort of jam/berry topping. It tasted like it sounds, jam on potatoes. It's good, but jam tends to be good.

I grabbed a sort of egg patty fried together with some bits of carrot and greenery. It looked like if a hash brown was made with, you know, substance to it. Slightly greasy, but that's a hashbrown type for you. It's weak to paper towel type pokemon.

I also had some fried... somethings. I have no idea, really. There didn't appear to be anything inside, so it may have just been batter? They were shaped that I was more than half expecting to bite into shrimp. They were also pretty cold, so that was a poor choice. Lastly I picked up a piece of bread/pastry/bun that was sweet when I first bit into it but then was mostly buttery. I don't know, it was a complicated taste, but I liked it a lot.

After Alona left the table we mostly chatted about Marvel characters- I know Bradley isn't into that, so next time we'll talk more about what he likes to talk about.

I was due in about 15 minutes for class, so I asked Steve if he'd take some cash and grab some laundry soap for me- he agreed, and later I found the bar of "Popular" brand laundry soap waiting for me in front of my computer staton for the day. It... looked like a bar of soap. I found Steve, thanked him for picking it up, and asked "so.. this just goes in the laundry machine then?"

He quickly told me no, that the bar is for handwashing clothes and that I shouldn't put it into the washing machine, that there's liquid soap for that, and he was sorry he didn't realize I had a machine. No worries, maybe I'll do some handwashing that night. *Spoiler alert* I didn't.

*Clarity note* I've done laundry, guys, I just don't take a whole lot for granted here. We throw packets of soap into the dishwashing machine back home... maybe this is just a larger version of the same idea? A soap packet for the laundry machine? So, that was my reasoning.

I had to teach past tense versus present perfect. And I'm just not familiar enough with it to explain it properly, to explain the rules behind it. I need to make sure I scan my lesson plans, not just for which pages may need to be photocopied, but lessons requiring specific tense issues, if for no other reason then so I can look over the tense notes I have in my notebook.

I guess you could say the subject makes ME tense! (yay, confetti everywhere, no one has ever successfully made that pun before in the history of English- I'm a champion!! Free scarves for everyone!)

I had a class on the terms plus, minus, times (I threw in 'muliplied by' to go with), divided by, and equals. The testing of such terms had us doing a lot of simple math... simple, but it still tripped me up checking the answers. Subtraction and division, what can I say? They can trip you up.

One girl said, for "0.25", "zero point twenty-five", and I said it should be "zero point two five". That's right, right? Do you ever say "zero point twenty-five"? At the very least, it isn't ordinary usage.

That math class had a girl waiting well before the other two arrived- Sunny. She's apparently spent ten years learning Japanese, so we talked about the few Japanese words I know. She was easily the strongest student for that class, always ready to answer (okay, that's enough Sunny) and always remembering to add the units.

I had my last class with Steve and Grace, who is expecting her first kid. The lesson revolved around practical applications of past tense versus present perfect, which is fine. It's easy enough to hear, it's just explaining the rules of the grammar that I need to work on.

It was a relatively straightforward lesson- I mentioned the trouble I had with the grammar portion earlier in the day, and Grace razzed me with a "maybe we shouldn't trust you on this". I assured her, with listening, you were in good hands.

And that's pretty much it. I saw the next day was Saturday, which meant having to arrive at 9am, so that hurts. It's 8:06am now, so I've got to rush over to get to work.

Wish me luck, have a good day