Nine People!

I had nine students for class tonight! I thought maybe two or four, but surprise!!! Nine times ten dollars is that much extra in my paycheck. At least five of them will be back next week... woohoo!
It was a bit hectic, one lady wanted help with turning a heel on a sock and had a language barrier as well, she sounded like she spoke French but when I looked at her notes, it looked Arabic. i could be wrong about the accent, but in any case, she's willing to come back next time and learn to do the heel on two circulars instead of dpn's. She was using a cottony type yarn on size 11 bamboo needles... just not conducive to good movement. Turning the heel is kind of intense anyway and I had to share her with eight other people. I think she was told there weren't as many people on Friday and here she shows up to a full crowd. That was mildly frustrating I think on her part and mine.
At one point on opposite corners of the class tables two separate people asked about purling and then asked about 1/1 ribbing. At the end of class as things were breaking up, one of them wanted to learn how to do a 1/1 rib scarf pattern she had picked up. I showed the differences in the stitches, told them that if you have a bump on the front it's a purl stitch and if it's a V it's a knit stitch. I think they got it then, and then they wondered about the term 'stockinette' stitch...had to explain that as well. Two or three of them had figured it out, but had never been told what it was called, only that it was 'knitting'.
One lady kept wanting to put the yarn in her left hand and I told her if that was more comfortable, go ahead and do it. The lady sitting next to her wanted to know how to do it 'their' way... and I watched what she was doing and told her she was doing it that way. She didn't pick up on the differences in holding the yarn, but when I watched her, she was doing it the American way. Got me confused for a minute there, but we got it straightened around.
I used the thumb cast on for all of them because it was easier to teach a large crowd, the looseness of it though through them off and by the end I showed one of them how to do the knit cast on and she was a lot more satisfied with that.
I was picking up on their reactions and body language and picked up on whether they were totally confused or got it.
Yay! Most of them were very enthusiastic about coming back and only one, a little girl had expected to learn crochet, not knitting likely won't come back. She was getting totally frustrated between her mom and grandma trying to teach her at the same time. They left early because the little girl was almost throwing a fit which I didn't realize but her grandma apparently thought she was 'disrupting' class. Unfortunately, I couldn't reassure either of them soon enough so they left with apologies. That's cool anyway.
So yeah... hectic two hours of teaching and almost talked myself hoarse but found my favorite Ricola's at Target and took one of those (with Echinacea due to dodging a cold right now).
Two hours= 120 minutes divided by 8... not a lot of individual time. That's 15 minutes a piece... truly not enough time to teach anything worth while. Going to start a teaching sock for the European lady.

So anyway... I'm now tired and Ava's been a pill all day which we can't figure out. The only thing I realized was different was she got almost 12 hours of sleep and hadn't eaten anything sugary all day. Wierd. Okay..enough now, all other projects are going to be on a small hiatus until I finish the teaching sock.