Magazine

I'm going to start treating this like my own personal magazine, so there are some reoccurring articles that you can look forward to. Obviously school stories is a big one. I'm instating a column based on my elf with the weird taste buds. He mixes the weirdest things! Other columns include my screwed up homophones when I type, language barrier experiences. Possibly my ayi might gain a permanent column, or just weird things that I learn about China.

Ayi:
- Love love love love love!
- The organization of my apartment is becoming a little more intuitive now that my ayi is arranging things. It's probably a good thing that she does the laundry now, since I just push random buttons until I get the washer to fill up with water, who knows what settings it's on!
- She kinda takes her own initiative. She's rearranged all my cupboards, the dishes and the food. Today I found my socks all neatly matched and folded in what I had already designated as my sock drawer, so that was a lucky guess, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out where she put my clean underwear. I went over to shower at Ariana's tonight (actually, the issues I have with hot water could have it's own blog post) and she showed me the hidden drawer where I did find the missing articles of clothing :)
- Underneath said hidden drawer, there is also another "drawer" that is just wooden dowels, so it's a little hole-y. I couldn't figure out what to do with it, but then I saw Ariana's dress pants all hanging from the dowels. Genius!

School:
- Looking at me through a prism, a certain elf typically says, "Look, I see so many Ms. L!" But today was especially humid, and my hair I think had a little extra volume. So when I asked, "What do you see?" he responded, "You look like lion!"
- Monkey See, Monkey Do! We were really into copy catting today. One elf ran up and hugged a second grader today at recess. One of my other elves tried to copy, but the second grader was slightly mortified at the strange boy coming after her for a hug and so she ran away. Later at the same recess, one of my elves decided that the bush resembled a urinal and dropped his pants. Of course one of my other elves saw this and promptly ran up beside him and copied the action. So when Alice tapped me on the shoulder and pointed, all I saw were little moon cheeks just hanging out. They were so proud, and super confused when I asked them to go inside and wash their hands.
- Our PTA had a back sale for Valentine's Day, and one of my elves bought a box of candy hearts (talented bakers!). The other elves on the playground were asking him to share, but he said no. One of my elves was quite indignant. "But today is holiday!" He held his finger in the air as if to announce a scientific fact and continued pompously, "Today is day of sharing!"
- I got to play pictionary today. One of my elves still doesn't speak English. He can understand our daily routine English, but anything beyond that is guess work. He's also very OCD organized, and freaks out if something is not in order. He can't function until he has put things back in order. The first time he left his lunch box in the cafeteria was a huge episode. But he's gotten used to just pointing to the empty space in his cubby and I know he wants to go back to the cafeteria. Today, however his mom took his lunch box after the bake sale. I tried to tell him this, but he didn't understand and started to panic attack. I ran to get the piece of paper and pen. At first he told me "No no no." But then I drew his lunch box. I had his attention. He was watching me. I drew his mom, and his little brother with the soccer ball. I started to repeat that his mom took his lunch with her. That seemed to satisfy him. I have mad drawing skillz!!!

Language:
- I guess this is in reverse. It wasn't me speaking English, it was my elf speaking English. Normally there are two packages of tissue out on the lunch table for messy hands, but today there was only one. My elf said, "Look, no more this one tissue!" Just very interesting sentence structure.
- A lot of English language learners have difficulty with words that start with /s/, or the /th/ sound, or ending a word with a consonant (they always add /a/ at the end of the word). Because of this, the Chinese say "mouth" as "mouse", as in, "I want to put the candy in my mouse." and they call Erich, Ericka.

The Taste Bud Elf:
- Today he was eating french fries. He had a giant bowl of catch up, but to my surprise, he dipped the french fries in his soup instead. By the end of lunch, he had dumped all his french fries in his soup and just ate it.

Homophones:
- This should definitely be a reoccurring article I think. I love catching what my brain does with homophones. Maybe this should be a game. I've already caught one mistake :) Can you find it?