Kids say the darndest things

1. To teach the letter "x" the Phonics book uses "fox". We repeat the same words over and over until the kids get it. Their accents, combined with an inability to produce the sounds of English, results in a very large group of small children chanting "fuck, fuck, fuck...".

2. "Teacher! He has 4 blue balls!" - Said while playing a game that divided the class into team red and team blue. There were no balls (of any sort) in sight at the time, so I've yet to figure out where this gem of a line came from.

3. "She says you're beautiful (while pointing at someone else), but I think you are very big". Kids are so cute before they open their mouths.

And for the grand finale:

4. "It is a big, black fag"...and by fag he meant bag.

Chaos: redefined.

Nothing cuter than 16 5 year-old Chinese kids, right?

That’s exactly what I used to think.

I just started a brand new class with that exact makeup. None of them have any ability in English, so 16 is about 15 more live, little, wiggly things than I can handle without the ability to communicate. They are slowly (or maybe rapidly?) sucking the life out of me.

Very few of them have started into Chinese school full time, so they’re not used to sitting in one place for an extended period of time. I have a hard time keeping them focused on one thing for any longer than 2 or 3 minutes before kids start falling asleep, flipping pages, crawling on the floor, looking out the window, picking the paint off the wall, or anything and everything other than watching me. You can imagine how much creativity this requires considering that, right now, I’m only allowed to teach letters, colours, and numbers. I have to fill 2.5 hours with this, and their attention spans allot me 90-second increments.

We’re doing basic phonics right now: “A, ah, apple, B, buh, bear…”. Each page of their book has one letter on it. I spend the better part of the class walking around and flipping their pages to make sure they’re all on the same spot…and therein lies the problem. Once I’ve got Cindy and Simon on D like everyone else (was), I look around to find Michelle's on Z, Danny's on Q, Jack's sitting on the floor, Jeff's sleeping, Sam's kicking Simon, Jane’s at the door with her legs crossed, and Tim’s got his hands in his pants.

Picture that scenario. Now try to imagine how you would get control of 16 Chinese kids who don’t yet recognize the sound of their English names.

150 minutes of complete and utter chaos.

Perspective

I think I am at the pinnacle of boredom. My ADD-esque tendencies have kicked in full force. After 1.5 days cooped up mid-typhoon, I think my ADD’d out self needs to run around the streets screaming to get it out of my system. The following are my desperate attempts to entertain myself over the past 2 hours:

-Phone everyone I can think of in Canada, but apparently you all have lives. But let’s be honest here. I’m in Taiwan and I don’t call often. The least - the very least - you could do is be home when I actually do.

-Re-read my journal from Vietnam, Thailand and Indo to try and re-live the more exciting moments of my life. Upon further consideration, however, I realize that my current situation is better than being fired at by some cracked out, power tripping, trigger happy cops.

-Played Hearts on my computer. Unfortunately the unavoidable temptation to restart every time you get a heart sort of sucks the life and fun out of this game.

-Broke out the Mandarin phrase book. I should’ve seen it coming, but the ADD that caused this stir crazy, cabin fever episode was also the causal factor in tonight’s failed attempt at mastering Mandarin.

-Tried to harass Steph into entertaining me, but she did little more than laugh at me.

-Write.

So here I am, writing. It’s actually a bit of a milestone. I just recently hit the 4 month mark. I have now been living in Asia for as long as it would take me to complete a semester or my summer job. Up until this point my life has gone in cycles of school, work, school, work. The most excitement I experienced in a 4-month period was the occasional crazy man being kicked off the subway or the newest trend making its debut on the grounds of Western. These past 4 months have been…different. While last winters advent of Lulu’s tucked into Uggs was no-doubt momentous, I have since experienced a category 5 hurricane, witnessed hostile gunfire, become a legal resident in a country where only a very non-vocal minority can speak my language, set foot on the soil of 5 different countries spread across 2 continents and 2 hemispheres, learned to communicate without words, jumped head first into a job for which I have zero formal (or informal for that matter) training, climbed down a 30 foot waterfall, stood mere feet from a wild, deadly animal, and seen unbelievably beautiful land and sea scapes and hideously ugly cities

…all in the same amount of time it would take me to get 2.5 credits under my belt.