17/06/11

Teaching the same lesson again today with a different class, I got another round of interesting questions. One student asked me if I liked a certain kind of dancing. I didn’t know what she was talking about, so she jumped up and demonstrated really quickly, before she could think about what she was doing. Everyone, myself included, laughed at this sudden outburst from this relatively quiet girl and she sat back down mortified (but maybe a little bit happy with herself). Another student asked, if I had the choice, would I live in America or Mozambique. I explained to them that I needed to return to America to return to university, but afterwards I wasn’t sure where I would be, and I would like to come back to Mozambique. One student, showing off his retention of new vocabulary (our current theme is Citizenship), said “maybe you can change your nationality!
Many of my students have seen me running, so one asked if I liked to run. I told them that yes, I did like to run, and in fact I ran 20 kilometers this morning (my marathon training program has a long run each week). One student thought for a second, and then got a smile on his face like “oh this silly American has no idea what she’s saying.” “No teacher” he said to me with a sympathetic smile. “Yes” I replied. “No teacher” he said, with the same sympathetic smile. “Yes!” I replied. “No teacher!” he said forcefully. I am sure he still doesn’t believe me.