all in a day's work

Here are a few stories of the things that keep us laughing and smiling when go up to our cozy little apartment at night. We always laugh telling each other the random little things that happened during the day. I know some of you will get a kick out of them as well.

This is Ryan. He is easily one of the smartest 3 year old kids I have ever met. Well actually he may be four as of a couple months ago, but still super smart! He knows so much English already and has only been in school for 8 months. I just love his smile - It's ALWAYS this big. I get to see this everyday. When I ask Ryan "How are you today?" many times he will respond with "I'm super duper chickey monkey banana!" Adorable huh? Who cares about being grammatically correct when it's so cute it melts your heart.

This is Chloe. First of all you just to appreciate the bow. I walked into class and was caught off guard. She wore this all day. It's practically bigger than her head. Anyway, Chloe is one of the most polite girls... she always says please and thank you and tells other kids to "be quiet please." However, we were doing hand motions to a song the other day and you point to the sky with your two index fingers, but polite little Chloe decided to flip us all the double bird... not on purpose of course, but it just looked really funny with her two middle fingers just bouncing in the air.

Now this is Ann and Simon. They sit by each other in class and I love them sooo much. When they smile both of their eyes completely disappear. How precious is this picture???? It makes me smile just looking at it again. I smile a lot in class... how can you not?

This is Nicole. She is in Jon's class. She was telling Jon about grapes one day and how sometimes she eats the seeds and doesn't spit them out. And then she started saying seeds and pointing to her butt to let him know she poops them out. Hahaha.

This is Walter. He has the biggest head ever. He is also only 3 years old. One day we were doing origami - which we do every week - and we folded our square paper into a triangle and Walter proceeds to stand up and hold his triangle in front of his waist and say "Panty, panty" How he learned "panty" I don't know, but it was funny.

Today I was teaching two kids about Matter, Mass, Properties, Solids, Liquids, etc. for science. I used the korean dictionary so I made sure they understood what matter was and that all things you can touch and see and feel are made of matter. One of them turns to the other and says "Hello, Matter" and she says back to him "Hello, Matter." It was cute and I was happy when they understood.

On another class about a week ago we were talking about monarch butterflies migrating south for the winter and then flying back to the north. I drew it on a map with arrows down to Mexico, Florida, and California and then arrows back up. One boy raises his hand and with lots of animation he says, "Butterflies go south, butterflies go north (crashing motion with his hands), butterfly war, babies die." And that was it.

One of our pet peeves is that in many words that end in "e" when the "e" is supposed to be silent they say it as if it is "ie" or "y"... Like strange is strangey. Orange is orangey. Worst of all our Korean teachers also do this... even page is pagey. But then of course in a class when we are learning about what a recipe is do they say recipe? No... they say recip. Over and over I try to get them to add the "e" on the end of that word and take it off the others, but they just can't do it.

Sometimes when my 3 year olds finish a paper or complete something they will randomly shout out, "Victory!!" :)

And a final one for today... Both Jon and I will sometimes have our kindergarden kids come up behind us when we are sitting down and yank our shoulders back so they can reach and start giving us shoulder massages. It's so cute, they are so pleased with themselves when we say Oh Thank You! Especially my little girls in Kinder like to give me massages - (which are really like pinches on my shoulder bones, but it's the thought that counts right?)

We're enjoying the everyday treasures of being here and love sharing them with you. Thanks for reading!