Full Swing of Positions with my 8th Graders

So, from the beginning of the year I have loved teaching almost all of my classes. Notice how I say "almost". From the beginning of the year, I had some troubles with my 8th grade class. They were always interesting and obnoxious and never would listen to me, and I feel they didn't like me much at all. Yet, over the months, through some good times and some bad times, we have made several changes with each other and they have grown to like me and respect me as their teacher and as their friend. We have recently switched out of our small horrible room where the noisebox is just asking to be opened to a bigger class where I am able to get a better hold on them. I've even had some fun times with them outside of class where we are able to "talk" (I use that term loosely) and really grow a little closer.

(picture of people chillin on a hill and the ruins of Okor in the background)

One of these times was last Saturday where we took the city's annual trek to the castle ruins at Okor. It's a 14 km trek one way. We started at 6am and walked and talked and I got the chance to become a lot closer with them. This day was probably one of the greatest days for me out of the year (it's up there with the week long ski trip I took with my freshman class in January). They were talking and wantin me to do all sorts of crazy things with them. All in all, I was with them from about 6am to 4 pm when we arrived back in Kralupy. Our friendship has grown substantially, and if you would have told me I would be close to this class after being here for a month, I'd have said you're a crazy person. But it's been really awesome and I love them to death actually and hopefully will start hanging out with them fairly consistently outside of class!

(they had medieval dancing and historical fighting. I had many students involved with dancing and assisting in the historical sword fighting)

THey are really great kids and really need to learn english a lot! Cute story from my 8th grade student lucy. So she was asking me how long i wanted to stay in the CZ and i said probably just one more year and she got all sad and said why not for longer? And i was saying that I want to go home and be with my family cuz they want me to come home and all, and then she got all excited and turns to me and says," You MUST go home! you must! We are nothing here. You're family is everything! You must go home" She's pretty much the cutest thing ever. When at the ruins, they were trying to find me to tell me they were sitting on the hill relaxing and Lucy sent me a text message saying :"Where are you? We sitting on a hill [using "a" and "the"are very difficult for them]. Came to us :) Lucka :) So I hung out with them all day, and little Lucy wanted to speak English the entire 5 mile walk back, and therefore, we did. It was good. And she learned new words like "mud" (she learned they are very different from"mad" and "mood"), brand (like different shoe brands), and she was trying to tell me, when she was drunk that her head was "spinning". And also about 20 other ones that she probably won't remember because we maybe just used them once and also it's because I knew the Czech word, so i told her the english word. Maybe it's better for them to explain it than for me to just tell them. Oh well. It was a good day for her, and I feel most glad that I'm gonna be able to be here for another year to foster these relationships. What can I say, they love me. I'm pretty much a god over here.