It makes me sigh

The countdown continues. And starting now, this should get a little easier -- starting this week I only have to give one lecture per week instead of two. I dunno whose idea this schedule was. (Ridiculousness in estado-Spanish higher education usually gets blamed on either Bologna, which is the EU's attempt at unifying European university education, or the estado-Spanish lack of any money whatsoever -- I'm not sure which of them, if either, is responsible for this particular weirdness.) But I do like working less, so I'm not complaining. And now I only have three lectures left.

The students continue to inexplicably grow on me. They do a lot of things that bug me (well, really just one thing I guess, which is talk, but they do it a lot), but they really never make me feel like I speak horrible Spanish or like I can't do my job. (I do a pretty good job of that myself, but that's not their fault.) They ask me if they can come to my office hours, as if I might say no, and I swear today when I got a little triumphant about saying estadísticamente significativamente correctly, they were laughing with me and not at me. And, here's the part where I sound really self-loathingly ridiculous, I know, but they talk the most when I'm being boring and incoherent. They should still be quiet and respectful, but how can I really blame them? I would probably be doing the same thing if I were them; probably at a lower decibel, but everything here happens at a louder decibel than what I'm used to. "Everyone shut up and listen while I fuck up this explanation of a boring concept." I just can't bring myself to demand that. And I'm mostly ok with that. I just can't own up to it in front of any authority figures.