Officially feeling great

My classes went so amazingly well today. I just had to make a note of how cool my kids are. I have three classes that stay the same every day, so I get to actually build relationships with those kids. They are the ones who are junior high- senior high age. Yesterday we learned vocabulary for airports and plane trips and made airplane tickets for ourselves. Then, I gave them homework to make themselves a passport, complete with picture and visa. Today, we did a little role-play of an airport/plane ride. It was AMAZING! The kids totally went for it and thought it was fun. And they were hilarious!!! The kids who don't usually talk were even into it. This one kid, Edward, is usually pretty disengaged and sometimes misbehaves in class, but he drew the card to be the customs agent and he was so good at it! He was asking about a million questions to each "passenger" about where they are from, why are they travelling, let me look in your bag, etc. Everyone was just cracking up! It went well in my lower-level class, too.
Then we moved on to talking about money and banks. They were so interested in American money and in explaining Chinese money to me (because I still don't always get it-- I know, it's dumb...). They even went along with the team activity I had planned that I thought would bomb!
Then in my afternoon class (higher-level) we talked about types of schools and had a really good debate about whether it's better to go to public or private schools. They also really liked looking at the writing guides, pictures, and yearbook that I brought with. We listened to the Beach Boys' song "Be True to Your School" and a couple of other songs that I liked a lot when I was in high school. They had a blast looking at pictures of me from when i was in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in high school. And they liked the pictures of my friends from college. (You guys are practically famous here, now!)
So, I just wanted to share with you all that today went really well and for the first time, I feel like a really successful teacher. They learned a lot and had a really good time doing it. I feel so rewarded and thankful.
Well, off to go rest! Take care!