Fridays generally aren't good days for me because I have to teach. I get really antsy every time beforehand, not because I hate public speaking, but because I am afraid I won't do a good job. I try but more often than not, I feel like I fail. Everyone says teaching is supposed to be rewarding, but so far, I've yet to see that side of it.

I always forget how unimaginative people become as they age. The younger kids are brimming with imagination, and we can have a wholehearted discussion about a made up holiday or a made up career, but when it comes to the older kids, they have such a hard time imagining. It's as if they've spent so much time doing math problems and studying science that they've forgotten how to think outside the box and it becomes a strain to squeeze a little imagination out of them.

For example, today's essay topic was about the saying, "never, ever give up." I told them to come up with three arguments for the topic, but even that was a little hard. They complained it was too broad, since narrowing what they want to say into comprehensive paragraphs is often a challenge. But some good discussions came out of this, I found out what their future career goals are.

Teaching Goal #5: teach imagination.

Anyway, so for the past few weeks, with the exception of last week, Iris' mom has been driving me home on Fridays since I've been commuting with Iris. Iris is really funny and really young.

During our commute, I was listing how old people were at LH: "Ben is 85, John and Clement are 86, Eddie, Hannah, Colin, Heng, and Johnny are 87, Tabi and Selina are 88 - "

And she says, "WOOAHHH 80's babies!" Like we were a rare breed or something, and I found this really amusing.

In fact, the guy sitting across from us said, "don't make me feel old! I'm 25!"

I guess this made me happy. He was really funny about it because the entire time we were talking he had this grin on his face. Plus, he was still wearing flip flops which I admired because it was like he was trying to make summer last as long as possible. (I would still be wearing flip flops too but my mom stashed them away somewhere. I hate socks.)

When I was Iris' age, I had the same thoughts as she did about being 25:

1) 25 is when the prime of your life will end

2) 25 is the best age to get married

3) 25 is really old

Now that I'm 22 and 25 doesn't seem that far off, I no longer think it's that old nor is it the best time to get married, though technically I could still manage to pull that off. I guess if I wanted to, I could 'never, ever give up' on this.

Oh well, I hope I managed to write something happy. I accidentally ordered something super spicy today at the Korean Basement Restaurant (unofficial name) and my tongue is still a bit numb.