Dolphins Make a Splash

Those little Dolphins of mine are the cutest things ever! It is so hard to scold them for not listening or talking during class when they look at me with those big eyes and sweet smiles.  So, every day we start class by praying, and I let the kids take turns praying. Now, you would think that this would be like pulling teeth, but literally every day there is a fight over who will pray and who prayed last time. I need to create a schedule. One of the girls, Naya, is a chubby little 1^st grader and she is one of the ones who loves to pray. Her prayers go something like this “Dear God, thank you for today and for P’Heather who teaches us English. Please help us listen well and behave and not disobey so that P’Heather won’t be sad and take away points for not listening. Please help us study hard and remember everything that we learn so P’Heather will be happy and we can get lots of points and prizes. Please help us listen well and not talk too much and ……” on and on like this for 5 minutes! It’s so sweet and she is so earnest that it is so hard not to laugh with the hilarity of it.   

Then there is Matty, who every day says: “I never get to pray,” to which I respond, “OK, you can pray today.” His response? “That’s ok, I don’t know how.”

Some of the kids are so smart at learning the vocab and understanding it. I am always shocked by Matty, who never pays attention and is always playing around, yet knows every one of the vocab words, even the really hard ones. One of their favorite games is the question and answer game. One kid pulls a flash card from all our vocab words and then the kids take turns asking “Do you have a pencil (or whatever)?” and then the kid with the card says “Yes, I have a pencil, or no, I don’t have a pencil.” The problem is that last week we learned about hobbies, so it was “Do you like” and now it’s school supplies, so they need to say “do you have” but they keep forgetting and asking each other if they like paper or like pencil sharpeners. They don’t quite grasp the concept that the questions are not quite the same.

September was the end of the quarter, so all the kids got to show off their English skills by doing skits for the rest of the group. Our little skit had all the kids being different animals and going to a party at the cat’s house. They were so cute and over enunciated everything, so I could understand them, but the Thai staff couldn’t! It cracked me up. Orawun (her daugher Kayla is in my class) would laugh and laugh because she would hear us practicing and I would tell Kayla, “Great job! That was perfect!” and Orawun would be like “I have NO idea what she is saying.” Even so, I think they did a great job. They were great at being loud enough so everyone heard what they said though, and they got to finish it all off with party poppers, which were a big hit. They were most excited about the duck call necklaces I brought from America though. I had been saving them for a special occasion to give to the kids, so I thought it would be funny to have half the kids with poppers and half the kids blow their duck whistles. They thought it was hysterical and of course, everyone else wanted one too. Too bad I only had enough for 20 kids, but they will survive.

The Penguins class all said their names and what hobbies they like, while the Tigers did a skit where they were all family members named after emotions and they did a family talent show. It was pretty cute. The oldest class, Eagles, was the funniest of all. They did a song about the sounds animals make and Billy, who is a total ham, was over exaggerating all the sounds, so he was super expressive. My favorite was “snakes say hiss, hiss.” He would push his lower jaw forward as he said the ‘h’ in a way that I cannot emulate. Then they did a song about emotions, like “I’m hiding cause I’m scared,” and his actions were hilarious! All the kids were rolling on the floor with laughter. They finished off with a great skit about two kids camping, one inside the tent, one outside. The wild animals come and attack the kid outside, so the kids switch places and then the animals come back and decide it’s not fair to torture the outside kid again, so they attack the kid inside the tent. I’m not describing it very well, but it was funny in the execution.

Next up for class is more study about school and we are starting to prep for our Christmas party! Each class will do a skit and then we will have our music classes do some songs to break up the show. We are pretty excited about it. Our plan is to get round ice chests for each family and stuff them with household supplies. For the kids, we want to buy backpacks and fill them with school supplies like pencils, erasers, markers and rulers. Most of the kids just have little nubs for erasers and use one pencil for months until it is about as big as my thumbnail, so that stuff is so necessary for their educational future.