tu-i-tion

i found out last night the girl under my tutelage is a math olympiad. and i was like.. WHOA. and WHOA. and WHOA again. felt so humbled. and so envious.

speaking of tuition, and speaking of speech, i corrected her pronunciation of awry (that is, it should be a-rye, not aw-ree). while it's not an oft-spoken word, i told her that people might do a double take if she pronounced it correctly because most of us are used to the wrong pronunciation (which we probably only hear in our heads, since it doesn't come out in conversation very often)(when was the last time you use awry?)(i learned this lesson in my 20s, so i am assuming that everyone is as slow as i am hahaha)(oh well :| ).

still on the topic of tuition, i have a young pair of twins who are very weak in English (my rule of thumb to the other students that thou shall speaketh no other language other than ye olde English cannot apply here)(i practically conduct the class in my half past six 华语 *pats self on back*)(too many parentheses derailed my train of thought -- where was i..? oh.) that it takes considerable effort to read or spell simple words like sad or shy --they have no prob with happy though -- and unsurprisingly, no problem with spelling angry. guess where they learn it from? (hint: steve jobs made it possible)

it's actually quite fun being a tuition teacher (except for the rush to leave and the traffic jam parts in getting to their homes after work - that makes me wanna quit every week *whimpers). sometimes i wonder how i get away with it because i still struggle with explaining the technical parts (and you can see how this blog is littered with grammatical errors -- i know, i cringe when i spot them too)(and of course i feel it in my guts doesn't cut it), but they seem to be receptive. i could only hope i'm actually teaching them something.