Ha!

Another German lesson, seriously testing my patience.

It's an interesting dynamic: his wife's German is really bad and the way she looks at me, I doubt that she understands much of what I say. But I am able to display angelic patience with her. It's his attitude and his constant 'I know' that drives me up the wall. The constant excuses for his mistakes, which are never just him not remembering. This time, he complained about his wife and decided that I had to teach them separately, as she was supposedly the reason he couldn't focus.

Every lesson, he wants to start at the beginning of the book again. And while there surely is value in going over stuff, we are also wasting a lot of time, I feel. And it meant that yesterday we didn't do anything new at all.

In the end, he promised me to revise in time for our next lesson - for my sake (I did point out that he is learning for his own sake - admittedly he has probably realized that he will otherwise give me a heart attack, so I guess he IS doing it for my sake!). And that he would surprise me next week. We shall see... I do wonder whether being tough with him, motivates him. While I sit there, feeling like screaming at him, I do constantly repeat to myself, that I need to detach from the outcome of the lesson. And that if the only thing we do each lesson is to say How are you? to each other, so be it. But it remains tough.