So, the other day in class, I was telling my students about the party that the school is going to have on May 26th for no other reason than to spend money and to take pictures of students having fun. The school wants to use these pictures to show future students how much fun they can have if they join the program. Hey, I don’t mind the publicity stunt so much. There will be cake, fruit, drinks and a variety of other yummy dishes there as well. It’s a pot luck party. The only reason I’m coming though is for the cake. Heh.

I brought in the invitations, hoping that they(as in the invitations) would speak for themselves, but apparently I over-estimated them(as in my students). Even though their English has improved in the last few weeks and the invitations were written in the simplest English possible – they had a difficult time grasping what it was the little pieces of paper I handed them was telling them to do. Thankfully, one of the four finally got what I was trying to say and translated for me to the others.

“Oh, party,” the three others chimed in like little birds.

I thought it was probably best to then go over the invitations to make sure that they actually knew what they were responsible for and when they were to show up. That took another 10 minutes. 🙂

When I got to the line that said – “All staff, students, and their partners are allowed to attend.” – they all sorta looked at me funny.

“Partner?” They asked. “What does that mean?”

“You know, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband . . .”

“Oh,” Lisa, the brightest of the group said, “Boyfriend.” She pointed across the room. “She has a boyfriend.” She then translated what she said in Chinese and all the rest of the students were clued in.

“Monica, you have a boyfriend?” I asked.

Quiet Monica just nodded her head.

“Are you going to bring him to the party with you?”

Monica shook her head and quietly said, “No. He’s in Wenzhou.”

“Oh, ok. That’s alright. How long have you been dating.”

There was a long pause, as though she had to think about it. Or maybe she was counting in English in her head. ” Six months.”

“Ok, well, what about you, Yuti, do you have a boyfriend?”

Yuti’s eyes got really big for a second and then said almost hysterically, “Who? Me? No. I’m a good girl!”

Somehow, everyone understood that and laughter followed.

I guess that makes Monica a super bad girl then for having a boyfriend for six whole months.

Never a day goes by that one of my students says something that makes me laugh.