build your world around her

once i woke up today, i didn't really stop moving until i got home. i like busy days a lot.
this morning jerry and i went to chinese but we just learned idioms and random words. we learned how to say 'his head is in the clouds' and 'take a hike' but i can't remember. i think take a hike is zou kai.
ohmygoodness and we had a hilarious discussion about wallets and circumcisions. wallet is .. now i can't remember which is which, which is what i was afraid of! well one is pi bao and one is bao pi. needless to say, i won't be throwing either of those words around.

it was my last time with my outside class today, unless i get them in the spring again. that class is funny because i feel like i'm their age, so it's weird for me to be the teacher. today i was waiting for class to start, blowing bubbles with bubble gum a kid gave me yesterday, and i looked up and a bunch of students were looking at me and commenting on how i was acting like a kid.

2 side notes there.
1. it's weird how even though i clearly remember being in their place and thinking about how lame some of the activities we did in jr. high were, as the teacher now, it's really hard to think of things that the students will really enjoy and will cover what i need to cover.
2. i was trying to teach jaime how to blow a bubble with bubble gum this weekend but she only had 1 piece so i couldn't show her, so bubbles have been on my mind. and yesterday, out of nowhere, a kid gave me a piece of bubble gum. which hasn't happened in 6 months. it was the cosmos.
when i asked my coteacher, emily, what she wanted from america, she said 'something emily-ish' ..so i ended up with this austin ring. i gave it to her and she didn't open it in front of me, according to taiwanese custom.. but then she asked me during class what Austin was. so now i'm a teeny bit bummed that i gave her something that meant so much to me that doesn't mean anything to her. i'll have to show her where i live on the ring map.

i had a new class tonight for the first time. theyre like 7 and 8 year olds. when i walked in, they all gave me the look of shock and horror that comes with getting a new teacher. then they all crowded around me to look at my eyes. i think terri has been their only other foreign teacher and she has brown eyes, so maybe i'm their first with lan se de yenjing.

they were pretty good. one girl can only whisper in english though i heard her yelling in chinese. and one kid who sits in the front, frank, kept evilly winking at me. he kept speaking to me in chinese but luckily i understood everything he said and could answer in english. it was magical.
and there's this tiny tiny kid named charlie. he is so cute. i'll get a picture at our demo in a few weeks.