The rain returned to Esbjerg this morning. It had been rather nice over the past couple of days, cloudy but no rain. Well that all changed this morning. It was a light sprinkle as I rode into school, but during the morning hours the rain became heavier.
I had two lessons today: the first session and the last session. During the “down” time I had in the middle I worked on things for the forthcoming Spring classes at NSU, my syllabi, books list and such. I also worked a short while on the forthcoming speech I have before the English teachers of Denmark. That is coming up on November 18. I have some time to prepare, but I am learning a bit more each day of what is expected, so I have to adjust as I progress.
Both lessons today were with classes I had not yet visited. By now I was thinking that was impossible, that I had been with all classes at least once. Not so. Apparently there are still at least a handful I have not been with yet. Well, strike two more from that list. Both classes were advanced, the morning class a third year, and the afternoon a second year. As has been typical with each class it took these students awhile to “warm up” to my style of teaching. I think the first class especially enjoyed my pedagogical style of interactive dialogue. I will be back with both of the classes again later this week, and I promised to bring some things to show them.
One thing in particular about the morning class, when I was explaining the matrilineal clan system of the Cherokees (of traditional times at least) many of the young women in this class seemed especially interested. This class was mostly women, probably two-thirds. These ladies laughed and seemingly took a very unified feminist stance on matrilinealism. How I explained this (as I have so far with all of the classes) is I will get one male and “marry” him to three or four of the females in the class. I “make” the females of one clan and the male of another, then I explain the bloodline. In other words I utilize the students in helping to illustrate what is otherwise a totally foreign concept to them. This “full contact” style of illustration seems to work; think I’ll stick with it.
Following class I headed for the flat, just to drop off a few things before heading into the city centre. I needed to get a little money from my account for my trip to Ribe tomorrow, plus I just had a little time to kill. By this time it had stopped raining, well sort of. There was still a renegade drop or two now and then but for the most part the rain had stopped.
I got my money, did my browsing then headed back to the flat for a short while. I tried to check some early election returns from the US but was having a great deal of difficulty getting a wifi connection, so no info for me. I went to the grocery store, which now that I live in town is a three minute walk, to gather a few necessities and then headed back to the flat for the evening. I tried a few more times to check elections, but was still having trouble getting connected. Guess I will just have to keep my fingers crossed. Read that as you will.
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