Curious?

It's a known fact that kids get curious. My kids are no exception. Sometimes my students ask me strange things. For example:

1. Once a girl came in with her fingers crossed, held them up, and asked, "Teacher, what is this?" That class learned about good luck superstitions. lol

2. Another time my older group asked me what the word "n*gga" meant. (Thank you American rap music.) I answered honestly and the student apologized for asking. I explained that class was the right place to ask such a question.

3. "Teacher, what does ' 'round' mean?" I immediately knew the student was referring to the song that says, "You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round." Good thing this class had already learned prepositions! lol

4. After I assigned the task of working in groups to write a dialogue that another group in class would act out, a student asked me, "Can we write about a social issue?" I very enthusiastically replied, "Sure!" Turns out this group (2 girls) wanted their two characters to be gay in order to play a joke on the other group (2 boys) that would have to act it out. I nixed that idea ASAP since we're in a Christian environment and are trying to teach morals. Next time I'll ask what the social issue is before I give an enthusiastic answer.

5. One particular day, I had a group of students who asked me what a word was. Well, they kept pronouncing the word like "cows." So their question was, "Teacher, what is 'cows?'" I was having the hardest time figuring out what they meant because they said they thought it meant crazy. After about 10 minutes and more explanations on their part, I finally got one student who thought maybe she could spell it. C-A-O-S. I realized they were asking about the word "chaos." A crazy situation. Haha! :)

6. This question wasn't so crazy, but her example was hilarious. The students were working on making sentences that followed this format: "When I was 8 years old I wanted to......but I couldn't because....." So they were working quietly for a few minutes when one student came up to me and asked, "Is this right? I don't know the right word at the end." I looked at her paper and read her sentence. "When I was 8 years old I wanted to ride a bicycle but I couldn't because my equilibrium was off." She could think of the word 'equilibrium' but she couldn't think of the word 'balance.' Hahahaaa! :)

My students crack me up. Knowing that all to soon I will have to say goodbye, I've been really treasuring every day with them. It may not always be the most interesting day and we may not always be doing the most exciting things, but it is always fun to just see their smiles, or hear them talk more and more in English or see how much their confidence level has risen. It's such a joy! I will desperately miss that when I'm gone.

You may be curious about what I've been up to outside of class. Away from work I've been catching up on my photo albums. I finished the one of explorations in Tirana from when Beth was here and then I finished the one of the celebrations from when Albania joined NATO. I also added photos from my our first day in Rome. Then I added photos of our Colosseum tour and our adventures in the Roman Forum. I still have a long way to go before I'm caught up on photos, so bear with me. Please! What fun is taking photos if I can't share them? I just need some time to get them all posted.

The weather here is starting to get hot. Walking anywhere, near or far, is a sweaty process and biking only enhances the sweat level. But, that means it has not been raining. Woo hoooooo!!!!!!! :) I hope most of the rain is gone for good. I've seen enough of it to last me a long long time.

Keep the prayers coming because now is when we have to start figuring out how much of what we've implemented this past year will be able to be continued when we're gone. Not only do we have to figure that out, we have to figure out how, and continue teaching people how to do it. It's no small task. It's not an easy one either. Pray that God gives us the guidance we need to keep things moving along successfully here. Thank you!