I'm going to try to tell a few more anecdotes from school, but the thing is, amusing things happen pretty frequently, but so often it's all about the facial expressions and just knowing the kids, that I'm afraid they lose some quality in the retelling. But I'll just tell a few things that have made me chuckle lately anyway.
Actually this one happened around Christmas time. I had a first grader ask me if I seen Santa Claus and I told her I hadn't and she seemed absolutely shocked. I started to wonder if I had heard her correctly when she exclaimed "Doesn't he go to foreign countries?" My teacher took over for me here, since my Chinese wasn't able to cover any sort of answer, unless I told her straight up "Santa isn't real" which seemed like would have been a bad choice.
A couple times I've been teaching about something or other (once it was teaching the vocab word "sandwich" and another time about American lunches) and the fact that American eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (for lunch no less!) shocks the class. I've never seen my sixth graders so passionate about anything before as they were about how outrageous peanut and jelly is. My co-teacher tried to compare it to stinky tofu saying that Americans think that stinky tofu is terrible because we aren't used to it and they think peanut butter and jelly is terrible because they aren't used to it. But the students would have none of it. They said things like, "But stinky tofu is so good!" (I had to bite my tongue at that point...I would bet large sums of money that whoever you are reading this, you would not like stinky tofu).
Anyway, in second grade the other day we were teaching the word net to go with the letter n and there was a little clip on the e-book of someone using a net to try to catch a butterfly, which he didn't end up catching. We watched it a few times, saying "N, net"and then the kids would all start yelling, "jia you! jia you!" Cheering for the guy to catch it this time...apparently no one had caught on that it was the exact same cartoon each time.
A couple weeks ago, after my new fifth grade class a student came up and asked me to draw something. I told him I didn't know how to draw and he asked if I'd draw a person. Well, I really can't draw people so then when he asked if I would draw a rabbit I thought I had better agree before it got too difficult. So the next thing I knew I was sketching a little rabbit in the middle of his Hello Darbie! English book...only after I started did I realize that a teacher probably shouldn't be promoting drawing in the middle of textbooks, but I was using a pen so it as too late. Anyway, he seemed happy enough with it and the next week a small group approached me after class with a pen and a post-it note requesting another rabbit. He brought his book along to show me "like this one". So I drew another rabbit (and signed it this time).
All the students here carry pencil boxes around full of all kinds of things besides pencils and pens. Once I watched a third grader pull out five rulers and three erasers (nothing like being prepared!) And nearly all of them have exacto knives and/or scissors in there which I generally forget about until they start fooling around with them, usually by threatening other kids (although thankfully, I've only see that in jest). Oh the excitement never ends...
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