I'm a working man

I know this may seem hard to believe, but I actually worked 4 days last week, and it is looking like I will be working 4 this week. I seriously need a vacation. Fortunately, I am headed down to Krabi to climb for a week in early march.
Last week, I had the pleasure of substituting in a high school for an ESL class. I taught literature and Social Studies to a mix of Korean and Thai kids whose english is not yet up to par to fit into the main part of the international school. It was a blast. It is amazing how easy it felt to work with High School aged students after my short stint as a kindergarten teacher. I mean, I could actually reason with the students as opposed to resorting to jumping and dancing. And get this, they had an assignment to do, and they actually did it. I'm not saying that all kindergarten students are a bunch of miscreants who nothing more than to create bedlam, but I am saying that I have no idea how to work with those little dark angels.
I think the rowdiest part of the time was when we had about half and hour to kill and played a fun game of "Where's Pruie." This is a game that gets kids to close their eyes, walk around a room, and essentially try to figure out who is who. It is an opportunity to touch each other, which has its own set of red flags, but is also quite good at breaking down barriers.
[A good round of Chalk talk to see what the kids knew] Anyway, good stuff. It isn't that it feels good to work again, but rather that it felt good to be working with kids who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. I didn't take any pictures, but you'll have to picture me sitting around in a room with 15 teenage thai and korean kids talking about things I should do and not do in Chiang Mai (the number one thing to do is to be patient. the thing not to do is to loose my temper- interesting that that is what the kids want me to learn).