We're not mean to have our textbooks open during the lessons. They're meant to be purely oral and have so far consisted in firing questions around the room. Is this a dictionary? No, it's a table. Is this your mother's soy bean? No, it's my father's pencil and so on.
The teachers don't speak English. It's a nice idea but I am not yet convinced it is the most efficient way of teaching a language, especially one with such nuts grammar. It may take longer to explain details but the plus side is showing already: those constructions used in class feel natural and do not take as much thinking about as items only gleaned from grammar pages. Rather too early to tell, though.
At the end of each day our homework consists of reviewing the whole day's work and previewing the following day's. That takes a long time but it seems it has to be done to avoid falling behind. I am now quite tired like this zonked out office worker I spotted on the way back from supper:
So, still no time to write up yesterday's swimming pool story but there was another extraordinary moment tonight. As I was timing out in the shallow end, a chap came along with one arm and no legs. Surely he can't be going to swim, I thought, but he started stretching his arm vigorously by the side of the pool. And then, quick as a flash, he skipped up onto the pool ledge (in a manual way), jumped in and promptly sank like a stone.
Lo and behold, the single arm gave a thrust and he bobbed back to the surface, gasped for a breath and sank again. And then he was off, length after length and very efficiently. If I said he swam faster than me, I'd be lying. But he was pretty bloody quick.
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