Taiwan, 我爱你 (I love you)...

but I am looking forward to the break in a couple months.  It will be weird to be back in the states but as the time approaches I find myself looking forward to it more than ever.  It will be really good to see my family.

My students have been fun the past couple days.

Yesterday, the children in my deviant class informed me (spontaneously interrupting our reading of Charlotte's Web) of an ancient marriage custom in China.  Apparently at one time a prospective bride had to toss some sort of ball backwards through the air into a throng of eager men.  Whichever man caught the thing would be her husband.  It did not matter if the man was hideous; she had to marry whomever caught the ball.  Against her will.  My students claimed  this was only done in China, not Taiwan.

  They were quick to state that their marriage customs here were quite similar to western culture...where the bride throws the bouquet of flowers.  However, they seem to think that whomever catches the flowers MUST get married next.  Like it's some law or something.  I told them happily that T. Rhonda wants to run away from the flower tossings, not towards them.

This led into a somewhat lengthy discussion about T. Rhonda's marriage options, other wedding customs, and also I told them in a rated-G way about the groom tossing the garter.  I didn't even use the word garter...I drew some pathetic looking hair ribbon on the board.  And I made it seem like the bride took it off her calf and handed it to the groom to throw to his friends.

I don't know how much of this made sense.  They probably now think that the woman who catches the bouquet and the man who catches the "bow"(garter) must get married.

My little kids have been just as amusing.

One of my favorite students hopped out of her seat today, pointed to a date on the calendar next month, and said "This day so bad!!!"  She was pointing to my last day of work.

Later some students told me mournfully that their new teacher is not going to "make stuff" with them and I like to "make stuff."  Every Tuesday I only have a few of them in class so we create some kind of project.  Today we made a paper castle for the wall. We colored pictures of an elf, fairy, knight, dragon, king, queen, etc.  I had them write the words and we stuck the pictures all over the castle. The boys were a little upset because they wanted to make a moat filled with leeches (they just learned the word leech last week) but I told them we'd have to wait. Overall, they were quite pleased with their handiwork.

I caught some of my older students examining it intently  later.  Of course they pretended like they hated it when I asked them if they liked the new addition to the classroom.:)

I will miss them all, even the naughty ones.