A good day

today was a good day for so many reasons, but here are two:

First, I am just so gosh darn proud of my kids and their incredible efforts.  Today I stayed after class for a few minutes and I was alone in the room with the kids, who were happily coloring on the board (which I suppose they are not supposed to do considering the glee on their faces that I was letting them do it). 

Suddenly I heard a roar, turned around, and behold, Student A was crying hysterically, and student B was looking fit to kill with chalk all over his face.  I asked them to 'fess up who did what to whom.  Student C and B explained that they were fighting over a piece of chalk.  A pulled the chalk out of B's hand and B hit A then A hit B in the face repeatedly with chalk and then B really hit A and A started to cry. 

Now my kids are 6 and have been studying English for about three months, so this complicated explanation was achieved using gestures, sound effects, and every English word they knew (and obviously the chalk marks all over B's face explained a lot too).  I took the boys aside, we had an actual conversation that they both seemed to understand (the gist of), and in a few minutes, both had made up and were laughing together.

I am so proud of these kids, who really put in alot of effort explain things to me and listen to me and work things out together with me, instead of giving up because I was just prattling along in a foreign language. 

The sad thing is these kids do extremely poorly on school tests, and next week will likely do a  horrible job on their final exams, if today's pre-exam mock test has anything to do with it. Given that some kids I know completely understand me in general conversation and can answer any question I pose, yet miserably fail school tests, I have to question the validity of the assessments used in Hong Kong to measure achievement and proficiency in English. 

The other thing that made this day good is it occurred to me that the gratitude exercises I have been doing are really paying off.  It seems so simple, but taking the time every day to note the things that happened in the day that you felt grateful for really can change your whole life and outlook. 

The good folks in Berkeley posted a new article that research suggests people who take time out to also think about what they have received every day really helps too.  not in terms of thinking about materialistically what they got, but from whom they received, who in the world thinks enough of them to give something of themselves to you.   I've only tried that for a few days, but it is mind changing. 

And another thing that made today good is a boy in my class reached up to me and said something in Cantonese while touching my tummy and gesturing to my face as I was leaving the classroom.  In the hallway I asked the local teacher, "did he ask if I was pregnant?" (because I get that a lot from kids)  She said, "No, he was saying he thinks you've lost a lot of weight.  Probably because you are sick..."  lol!  Well, i have dropped at least one or 1.5 pants sizes, thank you very much, and at least one person has noticed! 

Sick indeed.  I have had the sniffles for only two days....