Thoughts at the End of Week 8

(I wrote this on Thursday and then forgot to post it.)

Thoughts at the end of my week:

I love having so many students. There are more in some of my classes than there ought to be, but there are a lot who I am happy to have the chance to get to know.

I wish I knew how to handle the boys. It's easy to invite the girls to dinner, to lunch, to stroll across campus with them and chat – but it's decidely more difficult to do with the guys. So that is something for me to be thinking about and working on, because I have some awesome guys in my classes – some who are super friendly and responsive, some who have such good English that it's really difficult to keep them busy.

Students say the best stuff. Here are a few of my favorites from the past week.

Student: *after telling me about her English teachers*

"How about your English teachers?"

Me: "Um... my English teachers? I didn't have English teachers..."

...you know I'm a native right?

Student: "He thought you were Russian!"

me: "Why?"

Student: "Because you wear so little clothes!"

in other words, I wasn't wearing a coat and they thought that I should.

Also, I am really pretty certain that we covered the first day in class that I am American...

Student: "Keeler, I have had a question for a long time. Some words I know there are two pronunciations for, the English one and the American one. If I say it the English way, will you understand me?"

me: "Yes."

Students: very impressed

me: "It is like in China... you know... in the south they don't say shenme shenme, they say senme senme... but it is still the same word..."

Student: "No, I don't think so. There are four girls in my dorm from the south and I don't understand them at all."

me: "...are they speaking Putonghua (Mandarin) or something like Min Nan Yu,a different language?"

Student: "It is because of their accent."

me: "...okay."

me: "What is something new that you learned today?"

student: "I went to buy breakfast and I found that there is no money on my card. So I am very hungry."

me: ".....okay." calls on someone else

me: "Are you going to show us some kung fu today?"

student: "My stomach hurts a little..."

me: "Later --"

student: "Next week!"

me: "Okay."

Student: "In the library there is a kung fu club. You can come."

after a long discussion wherein I ask when this club meets since that would be helpful to know and me saying maybe I'd come by sometime

student: "Welcome!"

during student presentations, I notice a student sitting there reading a book and listening to her mp3 player, so I walk over to confiscate it

me: "Give me that."

student: "No! I'm studying!"

Yeah, I took it anyway and we had a talk later.

It's still overwhelming sometimes; I walk into the classroom and wonder what I'm doing here. I still feel a bit like I may wake up or that someday a student will look at me and go, "Hang on a second, you're not a teacher!" But I am getting to know more of them. When I ask them what they've learned in class, they have answers (which are relevant to what we were studying most of the time, meal cards aside.) I've seen some of them gain confidence about speaking.

And that is life.