Lobo's Lessons

It has been a terrifying ordeal. I am drained physically, emotionally and mentally. When the quake hit, I was 5 floors up, in a building right at the heart of Christchurch. It started as any normal aftershock would, with the familiar roaring sound of the very earth moving beneath us. After 2 seconds I realised it was no normal aftershock, as the familiar rumbling turned to violent shaking.  I was thrown off my feet, and landed on my knees. Computer monitors toppled everywhere. The shaking seemed to engulf the world, and my mind almost went blank. I remember falling down. I remember clambering under a table with Bronwyn, my boss. I remember a short respite where as I slowly stood up, I looked out the window and all I saw was smoke and dust, like a bomb had gone off in the middle of the city. My mind still had trouble trying to take everything in. Aftershocks I can take with relative ease... A full-on earthquake.. with me smack bang in the middle of it all... Now that's a tot...

I have been teaching the pre-intermediate class for two days now. I only have 2 students at the moment, as on of them has moved to the intermediate class. After two days in I finally get a clearer picture of what is going on with the subjects of my research. Yuichi, the hearing impaired student (HIS) is performing much better than I expected, even given his hearing impairment. His grammar is rock-solid for the level he is in, and he reads and does the written work exceptionally fast. I find that the only difficulty I have when teaching him is when we try to speak to each other, and I believe that will be the best goal I can set – to enable Yuichi to hold a decent conversation with another person in English, without too much dependence on writing things down to clarify (which is the strategy I have resorted to for the moment for when communication breaks down). My other student, and middle-aged Japanese gentleman who goes by the nickname ‘Hoy-hoy’ is a retired medical technician (a gu...