Kids are funny (especially when you don't understand them!)

Walking into the classroom this week I was confused. I didn't know what I was teaching, or what I could teach. I wanted to be able to be something I couldn't, so I felt disoriented. My head was filled with disappointment for what this year might look like and very little clarity of what I was expected to be doing. It has only been a week of teaching, but I have learned not to trust many people. I am very organized and every time I relied on someone for something, it ended up falling through. Let's just say, with the combination of all of this, I was a little less excited for my first full week of teaching than I ever wanted to be. All this diminished though the minute the students walked through the door. I have 13 little students who absolutely love me (I taught them this....they don't know any better yet) and the minute they walked through the door their bright eyes and excited looks made me realize why I am here.

So I have decided that funny things happen often here and the students do things that I constantly want to tell people. So I may just start posting sporadically about the funny things my children do. So to start off I have a few funny moments. One of them happened today when I misunderstood my students accent. This little girl wouldn't leave my side during recess and wanted to know everything she could possibly ask me. She wanted to know my favourite food, my favourite animal, my favourite this and that, and anything else she could drill me with. Then after asking me my favourite animal she asked me my favourite snake. Oh dear goodness. My response was "I don't like them at all". She said "None of them....at all?" I was horrified and told her "No, none of them". She looked horrified that I didn't like snakes, and then said "so I can't bring you any?" Absolutely not was what I was thinking, but I was also a little confused at this point. How could this little child who seemed so nice (and also happened to be named Peace) be so evil and want to bring me snakes? That is awful! I didn't respond quickly because I was deep in thought about how she couldn't possibly be this mean-spirited. She repeated herself and I realized what our problem was. I replied "Oh, snacks?" and she replied "yes" and looked at me as if to say "yeah, we've been talking about them for the past 5 minutes, crazy". My mind had automatically thought we were still talking about animals, because we went from favourite animal to favourite snake/snack! Needless to say, her name will not have to be changed from Peace to War, and she remains a darling young girl who seems to have no strong affinity to my reptilian arch-nemesis.

Another thing I find quite humorous is the difference between me and my students. Well, I mean there are far too many to count, but some of them are just hilarious. Obviously we have a very different language capacity for their mother-tongue and a lot of them do not communicate very well in English. But something that kills me is their belief that the classroom is a tundra when it is 30 degrees in there. When I have to set the air conditioning to 30 degrees, I think that is erring on the side of heating and not air conditioning. my kids can be overly dramatic sometimes and they will be shivering their teeth and telling me that the room is FREEZING (I put that in capitals to help you imagine the emphasis the students may use). Of course, Miss Chrissy then feels awful and changes the temperature. A blazing 32 degrees of air ( I can no longer say air conditioning, because I don't even think that is cold). Nothing like sweating through the school day just to please the students. I told them to bring sweaters to school because Miss Chrissy is from Canada and you need to feel sorry for her because she is not used to the temperatures here yet. Yesterday one of my students looked at me and exclaimed "Miss Chrissy! It's 28 degrees in here!" I instantly felt his panic and thought to myself, yikes that is too hot! Unfortunately, that was not what he was thinking at all... he was exclaiming that it was far too cold in the room. I looked back at him, and kind of cheekily inquired as to how he knows exactly what the temperature is, hoping that he would become sidetracked and I could not have to raise the temperature. Instead, he surprised me by telling me that his watch has the temperature on it. Of course it does. His watch is also the size of his head and probably has everything from the current time in Africa to his BMI stored in it somewhere. I should not be surprised that my student in Asia has such technology. Unfortunately this meant that I needed to change the temperature again. Awesome. I think I am going to label my classroom the tundra and post a sign that says "sweaters required" on the outside of the door! I showed my students some photos of Canada today and later when I was asking them if they could pray to God and ask for one thing, they said they would pray for snow in Thailand. I then told them that they were not ready for snow if they couldn't handle the temperature of the classroom currently when it is set to 32 degrees. This made a lot of the boys angry, because they knew I was right. They did not ask me to change the temperature again today. I am winning.