Raye

I feel like I could write an entire blog post about this girl...so I will. Yes, she's the dong/waste girl. Yes, she's the cutest little future car model you've ever seen. She's Raye.

Story Number 1:
All of our kindy kids have memo books that we (their teachers) write in every day. It's usually something small, like "Please help so-and-so practice their presentation tonight" or "So-and-so did really well in math today." So every day after I finish my memo books, I put them in my kids' backpack. But one day, Raye ran off and wasn't with the rest of the students. I found her in the bathroom, talking through the stall to one of the other teachers. I dragged her out of the bathroom to give the other teacher some privacy. She wanted to talk to me, so she was facing me, forcing me to lean over her to put her memo book in her backpack. She chooses this moment to reach up and put her hands on my chest, tapping out a little rhythm. "It's like a drum!" she squealed.

Story Number 2: Raye and another (adorable) boy at the school have a semi-romance going on. They're always sitting together, holding hands, just generally being adorable. So one week, Raye leaves to go to the Phillipines. Wouldn't you know it, but the same week, Jin Seo (her lovah) left for the Phillipines, too. It was the running joke at school that they left for a romantic getaway, just the two of them.

Story Number 3: Raye was acting really goofy in class one day. She was making weird noises, jumping all over the place. It was to the point that one of my other students turned to me and (quite seriously) said, "Samantha teacher, what was in Raye's food??"

Story Number 4: Raye and her mother got me a very, very nice gift for teacher's day, and actually hand-delivered it to me several days early because Raye was so excited about it. However, on the actual teacher's day, I think Raye was a little jealous seeing all the students give their gifts and not having anything to give. So she came up and semi-creepily whispered in my ear, "Samantha teacher, if you come to my house, I have a gift for you."

Raye seems to have a penchant for the creepy whisper, as this has happened on several other occasions, as well. When a few other students were whispering "secrets" to each other (they're obsessed with this), Raye came up to me and whispered in my ear while panting breathily, "If you come to my house, I have candy. Don't tell anyone else."

Although all of my kids are stinkin' adorable, I love this one the most. So sue me.

Favorite Students

Imagine the pride I felt on our field trip last week when I heard one of my kindergartners actually applying something she learned in conversational English. Can I just pause to gasp right now? *GASP*

So, here's what happened. Background: a couple weeks ago, I taught my kids about the human body--nervous system, arteries, veins--everything. We even went over the digestive system and the process of food being broken down by acid and being turned into waste. If that seems pretty heavy for a seven-ish-year-old to handle, imagine breaking that down for seven-ish-year-old to understand. It ended up being one of those things I had to shrug my shoulders and just hope they gleaned some useful information. It's not like they're taking the MCATs tomorrow or anything.

Fast-forward to our field trip. We were told we were going to see a "musical performance." It ended up being really fun for the kids (and really boring for the teachers, as everything was in Korean). They even passed out dough for the kids to roll and play with. The "cooks" had them roll it out into a long string, and then coil it in their hands until it looked like....a pile of crap. No joke, all the kids are shouting "dong! dong!" (the Korean word for poo).

So then one of the foreign teachers asked my student Raye, "Is that poop?" But Raye responded with "No! It's waste!"

Immediately upgraded to favorite student status.