Again and Again

I finally started my new classes. They're all freshmen English majors, despite the fact that this school is 70%+ guys my classes usually only have three or four guys in them. Even in this heavily male school English is a women's major. I like my classes, and having only one type of class, oral English, taught at only one level, freshmen, certainly makes planning easier, but it does get boring. I gave the same class eight times this week. By the last one I was forcing a chuckle or smile in all the places I had smiled the first six or so times. It doesn't help that the first class is always a little slow since they're fairly nervous around me, and I have a lot of bookkeeping things to take care of, the school never gives me a class list so I have to create one. Doing the same class a lot also makes it harder to get my energy up in the morning when I'm feeling tired. Beyond that though the classes were pretty normal. I spend some time in the beginning answering their questions about me, so I don't have to answer the same question with each student later, and I always get a bunch of uncomfortable ones like, "What do you think of Chinese girls," or "Do you want a Chinese wife." One girl was so excited to talk to a foreigner I thought she was going to hyperventilate, it took her about a minute to composer herself before she could actually get any words out. I have a hard time imagining living in society where just meeting someone from another country was considered so rare and exciting. I imagine this is how I act if I met an alien. I wonder if that's how I seem to them, like a man from Mars.