I feel happy when…

Today we learned about emotions. I had 22 students in class this morning. We began with vocabulary

and I did a lot of acting out (hysterically laughing and hysterically crying were particularly memorable). We spent some time writing "I feel _____ when _____" - the kids wrote things like "I feel exhausted when I run around my school three times!" We played a game of telephone and that was a bit difficult. The rules of the game are: I give a word like "enraged" to two students on opposite teams, they QUIETLY pass it down the line in a whisper to everyone on their team, and the last person on the team runs up to the board and writes the word. Whichever team writes the word correctly first gets a point. I was standing on rickety benches hooting and hollering "be quiet!! I don't want to hear what you're saying!" and it just didn't really work out. They were yelling the word to the person at the end of the line and totally skipping the telephone thing. It made for a bit of a sore throat and a headache. It's cool, we still reviewed the words and practiced writing them on the board, and at least they were practicing some team work! We learned idioms like "love at first sight" and "to bare your heart and soul" and spent some time writing about "the secret to happiness." They asked me what I thought the secret to happiness was - I told them love. One of the boys said "the pursuit of knowledge" and one of the Brothers wrote something like "if you live a simple life, you can gently accept whatever happens." Li, a very smart gal who speaks excellent English, wrote "you can eliminate sadness by relaxing your mind." Some little Buddhas in class!

There was a downpour at around 1:30pm, so there were a lot less kids on the grounds in the afternoon - I had about 12 students. We spent some time learning "Crazy" by Britney Spears. It was pretty interesting explaining her lyrics ("What is she feeling?" "Lovestruck" "That's right, she's lovestruck. She can't sleep at night!"). The song didn't go very well. The lyrics printed out for the kids didn't exactly match up with the lyrics in the song (Britney does a lot of random nasally free styling in the second half of the song) so we were all a bit confused. Later one of the kids said "I don't like that song. I'm sorry!" and his girlfriend said "I don't like it because I can't sing it!" That's fair! So, that was a little fail today. When that didn't work out we reviewed some things we learned in the morning and played a game of pictionary with the emotions, which was pretty funny - "Team Boys" (very creative) vs. "Team Ladies First." I dismissed them at around 3:30 with the intention of going outside with the kids but it was drizzling outside and was much quieter than usual (no dance parties today!). We ended up hanging out for a little bit in the classroom, talking a little and listening to music. I played them the song "I Love It" and danced around. Huy pulled up a video of Taylor Swift dancing like a maniac and pointed to me "yup, that's just like me!"

Some of my little girls came to hang out in my class, watched me write, helped me pack things away, and followed me around the grounds, pointing out flowers to take pictures of: "Low-rah!!" (pointing to a flower). One of the little girls asked me how old I was, I told her and asked her how old she was, and she said "I am 11" "Good girl!!!!" It was the first English she spoke to me! She later wrote on my board "My name is Chi. I am Chi." You can see her photo above - what a beautiful little girl. Enjoy our floral photos!

Hanging outside of my classroom this morning

They were being camera difficult! They follow me around pointing at the camera, then when I pull it out they run behind me. It makes for a difficult photo shoot!

When the younger kids are hanging outside of my classroom making noise while I'm trying to teach, I take out my camera and go stand in the doorway - they run away 95% of the time!