Two Realizations

So I've realized two things:

1) My sweating problem manifests once I'm in the classroom.  Apparently, I sweat profusely when I am nervous. Great. All day I was fine, didn't sweat at all.  Then, as soon as I stepped into my classroom, in front of my 4/3 class at 1:40 this afternoon, the sweat came pouring, and I instantly became self-conscious. Wonderful.  Just one more thing I need to worry about.  Now if it were 100 degrees outside I would be less worried about it, but it's currently the cool season, which means there should be no reason as to why I am sweating.  Ugh, why do I have to have such an  abnormal body temperature?  Funny, but embarrassing.

2) I only like my advanced classes (5/1, 5/2, 4/1, 4/2).  The other classes will be the death of me.  Teaching 24 kids instead of 36  makes a HUGE difference, and it doesn't help that I am a newbie teacher and thus get super nervous every time I step in front of them  In the advanced classes (the 2's have math and science class in English, while  the 1's are like AP English) the students are attentive, interactive, and have a good command of the English language.  The students in my other classes seem to be out to get me.  Well not really, but they are definitely testing me and trying to see how much they can get away with.  Today I had to ask a student 3 times to put away the book he was reading in my class.  Ugh, I should've just taken it away from him to get my point across.

Other things that bother me so far:

--The students make fun of you when you pronounce their nickname wrong.  Mind you Thai is a tonal language, so one word pronounced differently can mean two completely different things; this means that when I'm mispronouncing their names I'm probably saying the word penis or something.  But it kind of hurts my feelings when I hear them mocking me or laughing; I mean, I am trying.  In my 1's and 2's classes I tried to make a joke of it, and make fun of myself too to make it funny, but they also weren't as mean about it either.  Alexis says I need to not take it so personally, but it's hard not to.

Ugghhh, so right now I'm just annoyed and a bit pissed off.

 I know things will get better and that this only my second week here. I can't expect everything to be so easy, right?  I'm trying to look at this positively and learn from in.  This means, that for my non-advanced classes I will have to try and make my classes more interactive in order to hold their attention. I'm teaching them about Thanksgiving next week, so that will be easy to turn into a fun lesson.