Good Old Fashioned School

Just some school stories. I've had some pretty good giggles lately:

The fluent Mandarin speaker that I used to have in class is back. He started talking to my Taiwanese elf in Mandarin so I said, "English please." It's a common phrase they know. During class time they are expected to speak English; lunch and recess they can speak anything they want. Boy was I surprised when the elf repeated the original comment in English: "[Elf 2], I help you get Ms. L with snake!" ........ Say WHAT?!

We have a morning sign up for "jobs" in the classroom. I have enough jobs that I sign up too. We bounce around a lot, so I usually get the chance to model each job at least once a week so they can remember how it should be done.
As we were going down our jobs list, I asked the elves:
Me: "Who's turn is it now?"
Elf 1: "You, Ms. L!"
Elf 2: "No, Ms. Pumpkin?"
Me: "Who is Ms. Pumpkin?"
Elf 2: "You are!"
Me: " Why is my name Ms. Pumpking?" (fully expecting a comment about the color of my hair)
Elf 2: "Because you are so yummy, I eat you up! Ha ha ha!" ...........................?

One of my elves was coloring, and she was really excited about the white crayon. I made the observation that her paper was already white and maybe she should try a different color. Well she colored anyway, and I think she genuinely expected to see a change on the paper because after a moment she said, "Oh no! White is broken! *pouting lip* I'll use blue."

So we found some more bugs. Not termites this time. And they were in MY classroom. UGH. When I first spotted them, there were only about ten. But within ten minutes, they had multiplied to 100+! I kinda squeaked, "Alice!" and she came running. When she saw them, she squealed, "Jean!" ... and Jean came running. I think Jean screamed louder than all of us. She's technically the ayi/cleaning lady of the building. Anyway, she practically screeched, "Jackie!!!!!" Jackie is our go-to guy. By the time he got to the classroom, we were all huddled in one corner, and none of us spoke, we just pointed. These things had wings, and NONE of us were going to mess with them. And no worries, Jackie took care of it.


And last, this didn't happen at school. I was in the locker room at the swimming pool when I heard some local girls talking about me in Mandarin. I gave them *the look* but they continued. Finally one said, "ting bu dong!" which basically means, "listens, does not understand". Then they taunted me, "Helllooo!" they called. So I finally turned around and said directly to the annoying one, "Yes, I understand you." I turned to walk away, but not before her little shocked face formed the words, "wo ting bu dong" meaning, "Now I don't understand." Yeah, that's right. Stop making fun of the English speaker if you're not prepared for it!