Lifedigs: Hit the Ground Running...

This has been an exciting first week in my new digs. With lingering jet lag, I began my first lessons on Wednesday. Both classes were high school students who were extremely bright. The assignment was to debate one of two controversial issues and use the vocabulary I gave them. One particular girl’s answer was not only grammatically perfect but her opinion was profound as well. I have a feeling these kids are going to keep me on my toes.

Even the bowl is made of cheese.

Thursday, I taught 2 lessons to the employees at Sirela, the local cheese factory. In a welcoming gesture, they put out a fantastic spread of many of their cheeses for us to snack on during the lessons. Their pièce de résistance was a hard cheese, similar to parmesan that has aged for 2 years. It had such a rich flavor that I couldn’t believe my taste buds. They were very proud of it and rightfully so because it was amazing. We spent the next hour and a half working on letter writing and conditional sentences. I’m not sure I made any friends with these assignments and they possibly wanted to take back their cheese by the end of it. Of course, I’m joking. These employees made me feel very welcome and I’m excited to return for future lessons. Even Theo got his picture taken.

Later that day, I taught a lesson to the employees at Erste Bank. I actually had met most of them last year when I toured their company. Throughout the lesson we exchanged comparisons have how banking is handled in the US and Croatia. My first job out of college was in customer service management at First Interstate Bank (which was an ironic name since there was no interstate branch banking in the US). So I am fairly familiar with the banking industry. I shared some of our Federal regulations, which I admit sounded a little ridiculous when said out loud, and they shared some of theirs. I am looking forward to preparing lessons that will be well suited for use in their field.

I finished up the day with 2 more classes of kids. The first were high school freshman who already knew almost every word on the vocabulary list I had prepared so I had to pull out the more difficult list I had for a more advanced class. It was much more challenging and they were probably wishing they hadn’t said anything. The last class was a group of little 4^th graders. We played Apples to Apples and boy did they have fun! They were just as sweet as they could be. One little red haired boy was quite the character. He had a great personality and kept me entertained.

We ended the week with language testing on Saturday. Representatives of the British Council came to conduct the testing of the students from the Gloria Language Center. It just so happened that one of the testers was my friend Mark from Zagreb. He was the one that helped coordinate my trip last year. I was really great to reconnect with him. It was also Gloria’s 20 year anniversary. So we celebrated with a cake decorated with British and American icons. The kids loved it!

British Council representatives, Mark, Eva, and Iva

Language books made out of icing!

Cake should be a food group.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed my first week of classes. Slavica, Ana, and all of the teachers at Gloria have made me feel incredibly welcome. It’s going to be a very good semester.