Memorable moments in ESL teaching...

So this year, teaching has been much smoother because I kind of know what to expect from my students. I've been pretty successful in getting them to talk, even some of the more shy students in my classes. I teach freshmen right now but I've had sophomores in the past as well. Anyway, some of my students have some incredible stories but you'd never hear it from them unless you asked. One question I asked them was to tell me about a time when they were lost. I got the funniest stories most of the time. I told them about all the times I've been lost and it makes some of them not feel so stupid for getting lost.

One story that was really memorable though was from a student who was almost kidnapped at 2 years of age. She was lured away by a woman in a busy market away from her mother and the only reason why she's here today, still with her family is because she saw an aunty she recognized and started crying really loudly. The aunty recognized her voice, talked to the woman and the woman got frightened and ran away. The aunty brought her back to her mother. Isn't that nuts?

Another student told me about a time when they decided to take a shortcut through a field (why does that always seem like a good idea?) to go home with a friend of his after school one day. They got lost in the field for several hours and the owner of the field saw them and directed them to their houses. They were only about 10 years old at the time. You might think that's pretty old to get lost, but in China most students stay on campus from middle school age and up. So they don't get to go home very much. Which also means they don't go outside of campus very much so they don't know the city as well as American students that age.

Another student (one of my Korean students) got lost on a mountain very close to his back yard. He had never climbed it before and decided he would do it one day, so he climbed it to the top and when he got to the top he noticed there weren't any good paths to go back down because it had started raining. So when he went back down the mountain, he was in a different city. So since he didn't know where he was, he had no choice but to go back up the mountain to get back to his home.

Anyway, it's interesting to hear from them and I'm glad their levels are good enough that I can hear stories like this from them.

Learning Chinese and other lovely skills

So living in China for almost two years, I've learned a lot of things I would not have expected to learn before coming here. Language wise, I've learned a lot of phrases because of the crazy things that have happened here. For example:

Earthquake
Tuberculosis
Appendicitis
Help!

Although "help" in Chinese is really long and if you were really dying, you'd so die before you get the entire expression out.

As of April 28th, I've learned the words for:

swine flu (zhu liu gan)
epidemic (wen yi)
flood (hong shui)
mad cow disease (feng niu bing)

Useless skills I've acquired since being here (mostly food related) that will have no purpose in the states:
-Making toast and garlic bread without an oven or toaster
-Making breadcrumbs
-Cooking entire meals using one pan
-Making ice without an ice tray
-Making pseudo-pancakes using only three ingredients
-Getting around in my place without locking myself in/out of rooms/my apt with my broken doorknobs
-Not electrocuting myself with the faulty extension cords, outlets or water heater in my bathroom
-Fixing doors and drawers myself (I never knew I was so handy)
-Making conversation with taxi drivers and shop owners without really knowing what they're talking about
-And of course, how to get around a new city without a map or English, especially in Beijing, city that I love and hate