My upper intermediate English class

I was trying to be nice and not mention this, but i just have to share a story about the diversity of my upper intermediate class that i had my last lesson with yesterday.
they are a lovely group of people, but collectively quite an odd bunch. The outstanding person is a lady who i think has Tourette's. she comes into class, sits down runs her finger across her forehead 3 times, then down her cheek three times, then shakes her hands in front of her three times... then while she is reading or talking she gets these tics where she puts her finger in her mouth and says something like "ooh yah" then just goes back to what she's saying or reading! it's quite fascinating, though of course i feel for the poor woman...
then there's a lady who i had a little chat with last week, asking her if her hearing was okay, because from observing her the past few weeks to me (such a speechie at times) she shows classic signs of hearing loss. So i go upto her and say " can you hear me okay?" and she just looked at me blankly so i repeated myself, then she turned one ear towards me, still not responding so about 20 cm from her face i say loudly "is your hearing okay?" and she said yes!! She got a bit defensive and said it's hard with the different accents etc, but she speaks english leaving off most final sounds, particularly /s/ (speechie friends it's classic isn't it). so poor thing appears to be in denial and i'm sure it must make lagnuage learning extra difficult. Then there's a French woman who likes to utilise Spanish class to flirt with every male, winking at them, getting cosy, whispering things, making little personal jokes... the apple of her eye at the moment is a cute kinda nerdy looking young guy who i think finds it all quite embarrassing..but laps it up all the same!! Then of course we have (you have to) the student who just doesn't shut up and tries to weave his life story into absolutely any speaking task they have! He's a sweet old man though, and keeps things lighthearted.
The thing about the Spanish (Catalans actually) is that they love talking and giving their opinion so while as teachers we are encouraged to design interesting conversation topics for our students so they actually talk, i swear i could sit up the front of the classroom and say "carrots" and the class would be occupied for the rest of the lesson! They had a debate about vegetarianism the other day (my lesson, ha ha) and one woman was getting really worked up (the only vegetarian) until one of our quieter students who rarely says anything, suddenly sparks up and says " i think you have to remember we're in an English class, it's not real". i had to bite my lip so hard!!

Sorry, that was a bit of a novel. i thought the benefit of the blog would be that you could scan and read or not read particualr things so when i rubbish on about stuff like this, you can just skip it!!