English Takes All Forms

Today in my kindergarten class, as I was writing on the board, the smallest kid in the class paddled me on the behind while singing the ABC's. I was so happy he was singing the ABC's, I ignored the inappropriate touching.

In one of my afternoon classes, my student got off the assignment by talking about China and melamine. She told me she hates China. She said melamine was in milk and chocolate and more or less said that the government was trying to cover it up and say that their milk and chocoloate were safe to eat. She was not that eloquent, but I got her point. Then she shook her head in disappointment and said, "Lies. All lies."

My last class of the day is one student named Anna. She is shy and quiet and never speaks in complete sentences, even though she is more fluent than probably all of the kids at Oe Dae combined. Today, however, she was obviously not into the book work because she miraculously held a conversation with me. We talked about amusement parks and wooden roller coasters and Hawaii and Dokdo. She said that she hates most countries (including America and South Korea) and would like to live in Ireland, New Zealand, or England. I told her she better start speaking more English.