Week 1: I made it!

I did indeed survive my first week of teaching. In fact, I more than survived, I enjoyed it. Teaching feels a lot like performing in a play. I feel like I walk into a classroom and become Martha the Teacher. She's nice, but not too nice. She's also desperately trying to remember everyone's name!
I am teaching two classes. The first is a writing course for first-year English majors. It focuses on writing "the college essay" (which I learned as the dreaded five-paragraph essay) but also includes lots of practice of oral English. I have met this class twice and they wrote short autobiographies for me. Judging from this initial contact, there's a wide range of English abilities in my class, but they all seem quite bright. They are also really excited and nervous and dealing with all of the freshman year craziness.
My second course in Business English for second year English majors. It's three hours long, starting a 8:30, on Friday morning. If that's not enough to make my kids dislike the class, I don't know what is. Plus they are second-years, so they're a bit more jaded and a bit less easy to handle (they're still Hong Kong students, though, so discipline problems will be subtle rather than overt). But they like the class because it's about using English as a practical skill. Cantonese is their language of identity, English is a tool to get them where they want to go.
I have lots to learn about teaching, but it feels good to get under way.