Breaking Ice 101

Then again tonight, same class.  I started asking the next question to the students but noticed that someone had wrote in the teachers book the words Sex and Watch Porno  at the end of the question.  So as I was looking at these words, I started to read the question which was, “What do you do at the end of the night other than watching television”?  However, I read it as “what do you do at the end of the night other than sex”?  OMG… Seriously two nights in a row, my face was red and we were laughing.  Wanted to break the ice not fall through it.

Uncomfortable Suprise!

So I was in class tonight and it was my 4^th class of the night.  I got to a question about “surprises”.  The question actually had something about "pleasant surprise" in it.  I wanted to make sure that they understood “surprise” because I wasn’t sure that they understood the word before which was “struggle”.   Actually the class was a bit of a struggle tonight.  It was the only the second time that I had taught this class and I think they were a bit nervous of my accent.  Well anyway I said, for some dumb reason… that a pleasant surprise would be a like a party and then asked if someone could tell me what an unpleasant surprise would be.  I think I was expecting to try to encourage participation.  So, a guy says…” I can”.  “Ok, then what is an example of an unpleasant surprise” and he said “like when my friend died”.  OMG, I felt so bad.  We were both apologizing.  He for saying that and I for asking such a stupid question like what kind of answer was I expecting to get, I was at a loss of what to say next.  Eventually the students and I were laughing at the situation.   At this point it didn’t matter what language we spoke we all understood uncomfortable and unfortunate.