Passengers

I try to explain to those I'm teaching that it's like learning how to drive. If I were teaching you how to drive you would be watching what I was doing, listening to what I was saying, trying to copy me because I already know how to do what it is you want to be able to do. You wouldn't be sitting in the backseat of the car daydreaming out the window and you definitely should not be asleep in the boot. Sometimes it's just not enough to be a passenger in the vehicle.
Today I was endeavouring (as we do a lot in teaching) to get the newbies to interact more in the target language, ask more questions, interrupt when they need to remove a barrier that is blocking further learning. (Hence the pic above.) Learning Spanish, or German, doesn't happen by osmosis, unfortunately for the learners. 
This year's groups aren't quite as sponge-like as last year's and today I felt that keenly. I had forgotten that the variable in this job - the learners - contribute so much to my job satisfaction. 
Today it wasn't even that there were snoozers in the boot of the car, some of mine appeared to have exited the vehicle and gone missing at the last service station...