Funny Things Said by Small People

This edition of hilarious comments said by my students was inspired by one of my smallest (and possibly the most adorable) students. Lately, a lot of my kids have been calling me Miss Hanita (Guatemalans add "ita" and "ito" to the end of peoples names as sort of an endearing nickname) which I really love but now some of them are calling me Mamita... like mom. No, sir! I tell them every single time that I am not their mothers and they just think its hilarious and do it anyway. Today, however, that small adorable child I mentioned earlier, told me that I was his sister. I thought that maybe he mistranslated so I corrected him by saying that I was actually his teacher. He counter-corrected me by saying that we were brother and sister in God's eyes. WOW! I am still not used to working in a private school in a country where 95% of the people are Catholic so this shocked me for a second, considering he said it in front of the whole class. The rest of the class didn't seem to mind, however and they actually all nodded in agreement. Well, at least now I know I have 22 little siblings in Guatemala :)

At Inter, there is an elementary school phenomenon going around called "The Cheese Touch." Students young and old will come up to unsuspecting students and teachers, tag them, say the words "Cheese Touch!", cross their fingers and run away. If you asked me for an explanation a few weeks ago I wouldn't be able to give you one but luckily Makenzie went ahead and investigated and found this... CHEESE TOUCH! Anyway, I am currently in a full-on war with Makenzie's students and the cheese touch. They sneak up on me at lunch, they send messengers to my side of the hallway during passing, they plot out who is going to tag me next, and some of them are even trying to convince my own students to plague me with the dreaded dairy product contact. Of course, I dish it out just as much and today I about scared the ring leader in Mak's class out of her pants. I felt bad for a split second and thought that maybe I should be the mature one in the situation and discontinue my contributions to this "game" but when Makenzie burst out laughing, I snapped back into reality and showed the girl my crossed finger (apparently, when you cross your fingers, you are immune to the cheese touching). I'm not sure if The Cheese Touch is popular in the U.S. but I have every intention of bringing it there in three weeks.

The young lad that I tutor after school is learning so much it makes my jaw hit the floor. Yesterday, we were reading "The Talent Show from the Black Lagoon" when a break in the page occurred to create suspense as to what act the main character was going to choose for the talent show. I closed the book and asked my student to guess what talent the main character would choose. He stared at me for a long time with a super confused look on his face. Usually when he doesn't know a word I say to him he runs to my computer and types it into Google Translator but on this day I was trying to make him use his contextual decoding skills to figure out what I was asking him. This is how the conversation progressed...

• Student: Gess?!
• Me: Yes, guess what the boy will do at the talent show. What do you think he will do?
• Student: GESS?! 
• Me: Yes, Student, guess!
• Student: [lifts up one side of rear end and makes a farting noise] GAS?!?!

Aaaaand of course, I lost it. Died laughing, couldn't even explain to the kid what I meant for a good minute. Luckily, he thought it was pretty funny too and in the end after looking up the word "guess" in Spanish he was indeed able to correctly make a prediction about the talent show. 

In other news, the Family Day on Saturday was seemingly successful. Though I have never seen anything like it in my whole life, it looked like most families were indeed enjoying themselves. I watched Leah go on mini rollercoasters for about 4 hours, ate some awesome Israeli food, helped talk the third graders out of being nervous for their Habitat Song performance, and ended up falling asleep at 9pm that evening. I'm not sure how much money was raised but hopefully it was enough to 1. at least break even and 2. get Inter some cool new resources. Probably neither, though :)

The ocean is a habitat, a very special habitat.
It's where the deepest waters at, its where the biggest mammals at!

Saturday morning Walter came to pick me up at 6:45am for our "10K" in the city. What's with the quotation marks you ask? Well, apparently most races in Guatemala are not actually the distance they advertise. I ran that "10K" in 43 minutes supposedly when I haven't been running consistently. That would suggest I ran all 6.2 miles in under 7 minute miles... HA! Walter thinks it was closer to an 8K which sounds much more accurate and explains much more about my time. It was super fun regardless of the distance and I am excited to be part of Walter's running group again once I have my own transportation. 

Estamos felices despues de la "10k," por supuesto :) 

After the run, the North American teachers threw our Thanksgiving feast and though we had to get a little creative when making our food with the resources we had, it was overall a perfect evening. The food was fantastic, there was plenty to go around, virtually no conflicts ensued, and the thirty people in attendance enjoyed themselves and were indeed very thankful. I can't really believe I only met these people 5 months ago because that Thanksgiving almost felt like the real deal. I don't think I'll be depressed on the real holiday now that we had that fix and I'll be in the U.S. a week later. 

My goal is to write at least 4 more blogs this month (setting my standards low on this one so if I go above and beyond I'll feel super accomplished). Hold me accountable! :)