Awesome things my kids say

Sarah (grade 1): Teachah, I am pretty??
Me (truthfully): Yes, you're very pretty.
Sarah (with a twinkle in her eye, and exaggeratedly flipping her hair over her shoulder): I am prettier than you one hundred.

While making a list of "living things" on the whiteboard...
Daniel (grade 1): Jesus!
YEAH kid, you know it!! :)

Sarah: Teacher I love you! I want to marry with you!
(just moments after having said...)
Sarah: I love coffee!  I want to marry with coffee!
This kid expresses her affections with vehemence :)

On cross-cultural marriages, and why it's not good for a Korean to marry a North American...
Claire (grade 1): Because then he will have to speak English ALL the time!

Tina (grade 6): Teacher are you married?
Me: No.
Tina: How old are you?
Me: 25 in Korean age...
Tina: That young?!

Julia (grade 3), coming into my classroom after I'd just finished giving two of my worst-behaved students a good talking to: "Ah, you looks mad today."

Julia, attempting to draw a picture of me on the whiteboard and getting mildly frustrated: "Ahh, I don't know how to draw your eyes!" *comes and peers into my face trying to figure out Caucasian eyes*

(Grade 2)

Eddie: I'm sleepy!
Me: Me too!
Elly: I think Ms. Ginny is more tired than Eddie because teach many students.
Candy: But on Saturday, Sunday, Ms. Ginny is just sleep and play and Eddie is study...

Edison (grade 3), looking at a photo of me and Flannery: "Teacher, I cannot tell who is you... very very same."
Edison revisiting the same topic two days later: "Teacher when we don't do a homework... your sister's face same as that face! Very very same!"
Haha apparently when I'm disappointed in a student I look like Flannery? LoL

Me: Remember, every sentence needs a dot at the end...
Kindergarten kid (with mild scorn): Period! Not dot!

Coffee in Bokjeong... or not

I had a pretty hilarious encounter on the subway yesterday.  This guy was standing next to me and struck up a conversation (of sorts) by pointing to my MP3 player and enquiring "music?" The obvious answer was "yes"... he then repeated several times before I understood him through his accent and all the background noise: "America?" No, I replied, Canada. "Pretty" was his next remark (spoken while indicating my person), to which I responded with a mildly embarrased "ah, thank you." It was around this point that he started trying to talk to me in Korean, which was unsuccessful for obvious reasons, but it seemed as though his English vocabulary was running out. At length he recalled "teachah?", "Engrish teachah?" and "high school?" so that kept the conversation going for a little longer and afforded him the opportunity to point at himself and say "no Engrish" - which I had already kind of gathered. :) Then he pointed at my coffee and said "kah-pi" and I was like "yeah... it's coffee...?" He made sipping motions and I hoped he wasn't asking for a sip because I didn't really feel like giving him one. Haha. That seemed to be all about coffee for the time being. Moments later, he inquired "age-ee?" while brushing my hand - I guess that was so I wouldn't get confused and tell him someone ELSE's age but it didn't seem entirely necessary... haha. I told him I was 25 (which I am, over here) and he said he was 35. (It occurred to me to wonder whether that might possibly be an underestimate but I let it pass.) At this point he reintroduced the coffee theme, saying "kah-pi... Bokjeong..." repeatedly while pointing back and forth from me to himself (he had already asked me "station?" so he knew Bokjeong was where I was getting off.) The only conclusion I could draw was that he wanted me to have coffee with him in Bokjeong. Aside from the fact that I'd just finished one, my purpose in going to Bokjeong was to transfer to the pink line and go meet my friend Jenny, which I tried to explain to him but he had no idea what I was saying. He seemed to understand that I was declining his offer though (at any rate, he didn't follow me off the train...) but he bore me no visible ill will and we parted amicably. :)

Pomp & Circumstance

Last Thursday we had the graduation ceremony for BIS kindergarteners from the Seocho, Daechi and Bundang campuses.  (Ours is the Bundang campus.)  It was a lot of fun and our kids did such a great job.  We all agreed that their speech and song/dance were the best of the three.  I was so proud of how well they did - even though I didn't teach them any of it (although I did help them practice their speech once for like half an hour, haha.)   Ms. Flora did such a good job with teaching them - she's the Korean Kindergarten teacher who teaches "musical" and she's so good with them.  She's the one who took me to the hospital for my health check and I like her a lot.  She's a very sweet, kind and helpful lady and she had the kids really well trained - considering how young they are, their dancing was quite well coordinated and they were very unified in their speech (and relatively clear too, for little kids learning English as a foreign language.)  The other thing we teachers all agreed on was that our kids were by far the cutest... I don't know if it's just because we know and love them but they definitely seemed about 3 times as cute as any of the others!

Near the end of the ceremony they told us we would have to go up and stand on stage with the kids.  Kristal asked if we were going to have to sing and they said no, just bow.  However, when we got up there we found out that they were indeed announcing that we would sing "Tomorrow" along with the kids.  Since no one had told us this beforehand, none of us knew all the words to it and so I'm sure we looked like really good English teachers mumbling away in the back row as our kids belted it out and their parents all crowded up close to the stage to take videos... hahahaaa.  The silly thing was that if they had just TOLD us we were going to have to sing, we could have brought out programs on stage with us so we could read the words, or at least could have read through them before coming up.  Haha.  Oh well, I belted out the parts that I did know and found myself laughing as that song always makes me think of Andrea Martin singing it in a smoker voice on SCTV. :P

It was so cute to see all the kids with their proud parents and siblings.  I took lots of pics and videos of the ceremony which are posted on facebook.