Work.

HELP!! I'm under siege from an army of beautiful girls. They're quite literally fighting for my affection and at the moment Grace is probably winning. She's totally crazy - with manic eyes and a cheeky, toothless grin. Yesterday I saw her whispering something in Thai to Kiki which must have been a secret arrangement along the lines of "you can sit with him for two minutes, but when I come back you have to move it". And Lucienne is warming to me more and more, ever since I sang ABC in a ridiculous high-pitched voice whilst trilling my lips. But my personal favourite student is Sei-Mai. She's incredible. All the other kids say things like "to-day-is-Thurs-day" and then Sei-Mai, the youngest at only 5-years-old says "Thursday 5 November November November!! Two...Two Thousand Nine! Hee hee hee! I feel hungry and tired and super!" Then she points at my arm hair and says "haha, monkey". I respond "hairy" and she mouths the word over a few times and then uses it constantly throughout the lesson. Like the raptors in Jurassic Park, you can see her working things out.

That group is called The Sharks, one of the younger classes at the private language school I'm employed by. There are ten students and most of them are excitable, confident young girls who seem to find me hilarious. I never thought I'd want to teach young kids, but it's absolutely amazing so far. I also teach The Squids who are about 11 years old and a very high level, they're a cool class too. It's not all easy though, I also teach at two high schools - at one I have a large class size of 39 students (but they are impeccably well-behaved and polite). And at the other high school I have a class of 25 absolute little shits. It seems to be a school where students go when they've been kicked out of every other school in the city. The worst student is a boy called Boom.

All good experience I'm sure, and no matter what happens there, I always have the sharks at the end of the day from 5:30 - 6:30.
So my day ends with me walking down the staircase with Kiki. "Kiki, how many steps?" And she jumps down each one, excitedly counting in her squeaky voice "ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!..." etc etc all the way to "TWENTY-EIGHT! TWENTY-NINE! THIRTY!!...umm...umm...e-...eleven?"

Yes Kiki, very good.