some things I enjoy, and some other things

Wanna know what I like?  Coming home from work and feeling kinda ehh about the day.  A small Taiwanese boy holds the door open for me, he was just dropped off by his school bus and is all alone.  I thank him in Chinese, and he continues to try speaking with me.  I try to tell him (in Chinese) that I'm sorry but I don't speak Chinese.  Or more accurately I said, "Sorry, English."  because I can't make many full sentences in Chinese.  I can pick out that he calls me "foreigner."  The elevator arrives and we get in.  I ask him what floor and he tells me "7" in Chinese, but hops to reach the button by himself. He's still jabbering away, but I don't know what he's saying.  He's very loud and happy.  I ask him what his name is, and he says "my name is Iiiian" "Hi, Ian.  My name is Annika."  (I almost said Teacher Annika! ahh) He looked at me and got a big smile and started laughing saying something about me being a foreigner and English again.  The ride to the 7th floor had come to an end and he said "bye-bye" to me, but I dazzled him and said goodbye in Chinese.  Before the doors closed I heard him run into his apartment and start talking really excitedly.  He was such a cute, happy boy! How have I never ran into him before?

Then there's the other side of children which is not so pleasant.  Enter my Treehouse 2 class.  They've come a long way from when I first started with them, but are still a quite devilish.  A lot of them come about half an hour before class actually starts, and since we've been running the AC in the classroom I usually go sit in there with them.  They've been trying to teach me a slew of Chinese words and phrases lately, but really half the time I think they're just trying to get me to say naughty things.  They like to make fun of me and try to poke my butt and pull out my nose ring and touch my hair, I tell myself they tease me out of affection (I can only hope).  They kept badgering me about a Chinese name and my lack of one, so they took it upon themselves to name me.  (No, they didn't drop a set of car keys!)  They were throwing ideas back and forth, I'm sure trying to pick a good one.  Chinese names are names in the sense that really it's objects or words put together and that's your "name."  That's why many of the parent's give the kids English names like Apple.  They finally agreed and told me my Chinese name would be "Pangzi."  "It means fat man!," they squealed at me.  Meet Teacher Annika's Taiwanese alias.  Fat Man!

But wait!  The TH2 kids redeemed themselves, but deciding to name me once more a week later.  Perhaps they had forgotten of the first name bestowed upon me, but they were bickering again about what my Chinese name should be. This time they gave me some options, telling me what each one "means."  They've now named me "WhenDowHwha"  which means something like when flowers smell good.  I was sure it was probably the exact opposite of smelling good, but I asked one of the Chinese Teachers and she told me the same meaning, so unless they've roped her into their taunting games, I guess now my "name" isn't so mean.  

Now, I shall show you my specialty of team name drawings.  In most classes each side of the room is a team, so they get to pick their team name, and then you draw it on the board.  Well, I don't like getting requests for lions and tigers because dammit they're difficult to draw!  My TH has been obsessed with "fire" anything for the past few months.  Mainly "fire ghost" is what they always want to be, but sometimes I get sick of that and make them choose other fire objects.  Sometimes it's "fire Teacher Annika"  or "fire snake," on Wednesday they wanted "fire superman"  I was pretty proud of him.  The other is my signature "fire ghost."  Sometimes I make it a girl ghost with a bow on top.  I didn't plan to get any kids in the picture, but I brought out my camera and they jumped in front and then begged for me to take more!

Onto something that I neither like, nor dislike.  I'm not sure what to think about this subject matter.  My kindy classroom received some new books for the kids to "read."  They're 3, so it's more like looking at the pictures and asking lots of questions. "Teacher Annika look! Teacher Annika look!  What's this? Teacher Annika look!"  The old books were about different animals, baby kittens, frogs, one about pigs with it's head in a yellow bucket that they would laugh at every day and say "crazy pig!"  It never got old (to them).  The new books are more.. informative?  They're in Chinese (they can't read in Chinese yet, either) so I'm really unsure of what the messages are, but the pictures are pretty redic.  Enter a book about a semi-cartoonish boy floating through clouds with fish, naked, then he's in a bathtub waist deep in water with a girl with their butts to the front, they're standing with their heads twisted over their shoulders looking at the bubbles coming up out of their ass. "Teacher Annika what's this?!"  Uhh.. that's what happens you fart underwater, children.  We still have a book about animals, but this one's all about their poo.  One page displays an array of animals all with their rears to the front showing how different their shit looks as they drop it, at the end of the line is a person, squatting over a bucket.  Then there's one that shows the journey of a large nose.  It plays the piano, goes to sleep, runs around the park, grows a mustache.  They like to point at this one and say "Teacher Annika, aachooo."  They know what a nose is good for.  Then the last one that sticks out to me is about a see through man and you can see his heart and the course of blood flowing through his body.  He falls and cuts his knee and it squirts out everywhere.  

I've posted before how I've grown to love all the variety of teas and drinks that Taiwan offers.  Not all, but many.  This is a drink that actually Anthony is addicted to at the moment.  Oddly enough it was a co-workers birthday on Wednesday and she brought these in for everyone.  Usually they just get Pearl Milk Tea, so I was surprised to see this.  I think it's passion fruit juice with green tea and seeds and bubbles and jelly bits.  Sounds and looks a bit repulsive.  But it's divine.  I got the drink right before my TH class and the kids were all jealous of it and trying to teach me how to say it in Chinese.  It's a really long name and quite challenging, so I don't think I'll be attempting to order it in Chinese anytime soon.