My first class

Well, I met my first class on Monday at 9am. It was a Listening class for 'Su Pham' students (those who are studying to be future English teachers). Compared to the students I met in Hanoi, these were very quiet and shy.
I walked into the classroom, and all of them were already in their seats from the previous class, a writing class taught by my teammate Manny. They all stood up as I made my entrance. I walked to my desk, put down my backpack, and stared at them with a smile. They all stared back at me, still standing. It felt weird to be greeted in such a way, so I motioned with my hand and said, with a smile, "Please sit down." They dutifully complied.
I got all my stuff out of the backpack, including my lesson plan, a notebook, a pen, my Supergo bike squeeze water bottle, chalk, and a wet rag to wipe the board with. Oh, and I brought with me a portable CD player too, which I checked out from the school. It's a listening class, so I played a lot of audio clips and had them listen for certain information (for this week, they were supposed to listen for numbers). At this point, the class was quiet, and the students were staring at their new foreign asian looking teacher, watching his every move. They were probably looking at my bike bottle and wondered why a grown up would still be sucking from a bottle! (Most of them probably have never seen a bike bottle before)
I walked down the little platform, scanning the classroom and looking at a few faces, still with a smile on my face. They were all looking at me and waiting for me to start speaking. I thought to myself, "Ok, here I go, my very first class. What should I say? I should start off with a few words of wisdom" So I said, "Good morning!" with my teacher's voice.
And they responded, "Good morning." Next, I was going to say, "How old are you?" (I learned this from Manny), but I didn't want to be mean on the first day, so I said, "How are you?" instead. I will save that for another day. I went on and introduced the class, asked who the class monitor was, and went through some logistics stuff. Then I gave them a pep talk, encouraging them to try their best to practice and to learn. I started out with a nice and slow, but then I started speaking faster and faster without knowing it. So one of the girl raised her hand and asked me to talk slower. I felt good that there was at least one student that was willing to talk.
Anyway, I stuck to my lesson plan pretty close and was able to cover most of what I had planned for the two periods. It was so hot in the classroom, and I was soaked with sweat. I had to keep drinking water the whole time.
There were a whopping 52 students in the class. Unbelievable! I was expecting low 40's. I am going to have to learn 52 names and faces! And guess what, 3 of them share my same last name, so you know which 3 are going to get A++'s in this class.
At the end of class, the school bell rang and I told the students they were free to leave. I was busy wiping chalk off my hands and putting stuff back into my backpack and didn't notice that the students were still sitting there looking at me. What were they waiting for? I think they were waiting for me to make my 'grand' exit, where they would stand up just as they did for my 'grand' entrance. "No way, I am going to let them do that to me again!" I thought, so I motioned with my hands and asked them to just leave first. So they obediently did as I asked and said goodbye as they filed out the door.
I took pictures of the students so I could learn their faces and names.