What the deuce?!? - A collection of humourous anecdotes.

I was gonna go with "double u tee eff" but I figured "What the deuce" read better as a legible phrase heh......

Anyway, as I said before, now that I have the ability to, I can starting writing some funny run-ins that I've had while living in Japan. There's no particular order to these as they're written more or less by whatever floats to the top of the disorganized jumble that is my brain..........

I figured I'd start with a pretty simple one. It's no surprise that when you teach people a language, they'll try to communicate to you as best they can with what language they have. Of course, it takes time to learn what they mean so when I want to move on to another topic and one of the kids finishing up the last activity says "One more time!", I had to think for a second before I realised he meant "Just one second". And that's great, because at least it shows they're making connections between words and concepts (time and one unit of it).

The best, however, is a little kid who I teach on Thursdays. His name is Shunta and he's rather smart. Enough so that he has lots of ideas and wants to say them but doesn't yet have enough English to convey them properly. So for a long time all he did was shout "NO!!".

Oh no, I thought, he might be a handful.

"Ok, let's sit down now." "NO!!"

"So Shunta, what day is it?? Write it here on the board." "NO!!!"

"What does this card say??" "NO!!!!"

*sigh*........

I swear it was 3 months before I realised that he wasn't trying to be a brat, but he had legitimate reasons to stop. He just couldn't say what it was.

Won't sit down? He wasn't finished putting away his books. Won't write on the board? The whiteboard marker he picked had no ink. Won't read the flashcard? He wasn't done putting his sticker on his folder.

So now everytime he says it, I can't help but laugh. I'm even tempted to start using it but somehow, I'm thinking it comes out differently from a 24 year old so, as hard as it is, I think I might refrain.............. but who knows....... we'll see next year won't we?? heh.....