We have to write how many stories?

Saturday wasn't the worst day ever.

In fact, it was a pretty good day. I got up with plenty of time to get ready and go to Starbucks.

I order my Venti non-fat iced vanilla latte in Chinese.

I got to school with plenty of time to finish my coffee and my scone before class started.

I really don't mind mornings so much as long as they go smoothly. I usually feel rushed in the morning, though, which is why I'm usually pretty cranky (take last Wednesday for example).

I was working downtown again and I managed to find a parking spot that I knew would be OK, so I didn't get towed again.

I was absolutely goofy in all of my classes though. I think it was the extreme amounts of caffeine. I had that Venti coffee from Starbucks and then one of the mom's in my brand new, first-thing-Saturday-morning class brought me another small iced coffee.

I couldn't say no.

By the time I got to my second class at 11 a.m. (I had already been awake for four hours at this point) I was bouncing off the walls. I was being goofy, dancing around the room and singing, "Take out your Woooowwww booookkkkksssss."

All the kids could do was laugh at me. It was good.

My news camp even went really well! I'm actually really proud of my kids. We wrote four "stories."

I made a compromise with them so that helped with productivity.

Kids: Teacher, we don't want to write anything.
Me: Well, you each have to read two stories in the demo in a couple of weeks and we've only written four so far so we have a lot of work to do.
Andy: TWO STORIES EACH!
Me: OK, guys, I'll make a deal with you. We will write a story, then play a game, write a story, then play a game. But we have to write four stories today and four stories next week.

They were OK with this plan. They tried to put one over on me by making a game take a really long time. Luckily, these kids are actually super smart and write pretty quickly once you give them some direction.

I didn't feel too bad about letting the game take an hour. Of course, they thought that meant we would only have time for one more story (making three) instead of two more stories. I finally convinced them a one-hour game is the equivalent of two games and so we had to write two stories back-to-back.

My last class is probably becoming my favorite class out of all of them. They're smart. They participate. They're old enough that we can joke around — this is the class where we were talking about all the boys being "yellow" a couple weeks ago.

It's funny because we only have an hour-and-a-half to do just as much as we do in my class earlier in the day when I have two hours.

Otherwise, I feel like I talked a lot yesterday.

I mean, I have to talk a lot for school, but after classes I talked Megan's ear off at Tina Coffee while we were waiting for Allen. Then I talked both of their ears off while we were eating dinner at TGI Fridays. (I know... Don't hate me for eating American food; I felt gross afterward.)

Even after that, I came home to talk Katie's ear off.

Since Justin (Katie's boyfriend) went home yesterday we had a girls' night last night. We grabbed a bottle of wine from the Family Mart across the street (high class wine, I assure you) and killed that while I talked incessantly, first about things I was reading on the BBC news Website and then about anything that popped into my head every 12 seconds.

I'm not sure if that helped or not. But at least my brain has calmed down a little since.

I'm so glad it's Sunday though. I have another long week ahead with more split shifts and two demos.

Tonight, we're going to Taipei for Megan's farewell dinner. She doesn't actually leave until Thursday, but this will be the last time we can really get everyone together for her. So sad!