I think the first day went pretty well.  There's not much to report.  I think one of my students is named Tucker, which seems quaint and cute somehow but maybe only because I think of Tucker Carlson as less than four feet tall and covered in mud that he slipped and fell in (and that makes Tucker Carlson quaint and cute in my book).  I got them to talk a bit, even interrupt each other, which I'm pleased about since the students here are rumored to be pretty quiet.  I would say my only unforced error was getting way too distracted by the biggest rubberband ever that I found on the little podium thingy.  It was huge!  Like maybe half inch think and could fit around my wrist maybe five times!  I wanted to stretch it around the podium or slingshot the whiteboard erasers into the hallway but I thought it would detract from our discussion of the very real dangers of the forest in the 18th-century German-speaking lands.  Not that this kept me from winding and unwinding it around my wrist the whole time.  Who doesn't love enormous rubberbands?  I should have just cancelled class.