Oh. That's cute.

After my first week of teaching in Kaohsiung, I already have a handful of examples of how cute, enthusiastic and precocious the kids that I teach are:

On my first day of work, the first Taiwanese student I ever had a conversation with was a second grader named Tim. I was waiting in the hallway for one of the teachers. Time moseyed up to me and opened the conversation with “No Chineeeese?!?!” I confirmed that my chinese skills were a negative. I asked Tim if he was seven. He said that this was correct but was vastly uninterested in the subject. He pounded his chest and said “I am TIM!” Then he moseyed off to attend to other business. Cute.

The other day I walked to the bus stop from my school at the same time that the kids got out and were going home. I walked part of the way with one of my fifth graders. I couldn’t remember her name. I asked what it was. She said “My name is Tina 3” (There are three Tina’s in one of my classes). Cute.

In addition to teaching in the classroom, part of my job is to teach a dialog at the “English Village” every Monday and Friday. I work in a room that is set up to look exactly like a real grocery store. The students are my customers and I am a "clerk." A portion of the dialog that happens in this "supermarket" goes like this:
Clerk: Hello, can I help you?
Customer (student): Yes, I would like to buy _______ (the student is assigned a food item)
At this point in the dialog I normally have to hold up a vocabulary word such as “carrot” in order to get them to tell me what food they would like to buy. One group of students was special. When I got to this part in the dialog, the students paused, as usual, for my to tell them a food item. All except for one rascally fellow who enthusiastically yelled “CANDY!!” Cute.

Another time at English Village, students were helping me spell pillow. They loudly and enthusiastically said “P-I-“ellow”=”ellow”-O-W.” I was really sad that I had to correct this. Cute.