a little coffee

Wuhoo!  I’m done with exams for the semester!  

Most of them went surprisingly well.  Most of the +270 students chose to perform skits in group of 3-6 people and many of them were quiet good.  They ranged from dialogues about  one of the topics we discussed in class (food, travel, technology, etc) to actual stories with rising action, climax and a resolution.

One of my favorites was a group that did an in-depth discussion on “Kung Ku Panda” that included re enacting Panda’s kung fu training while at a restaurant where the waiter gets so involved in the discussion, she accidentally burns the noodles. Hilarious! One group’s skit was about the Japanese invasion of China in the 1940s. One of the students played a Japanese soldier (with a gold, plastic sword) who kidnapped and murdered a Chinese peasant woman.  Oh, it was fabulous!  In a very Doodle way…

Aaaaaand I had students looking up skits on the Internet (my fault because I thought it was understood that each group needed to write their own).  These included scenes from Snow White, Aladdin, and even Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Other students did a debate about technology… they were mostly my assholes…oh how I wanted to fail them!  But it seems most of them can speak English a little.  Even if it’s sentences a chimpanzee can say… they might still fail.

Now it’s time to brag about myself and my awesomeness.  

Several groups, after their skits, sang me a song!  They were mostly Christmas songs, like “Jingle Bells” but I also got a couple “Happy New Years” (one set to the tune of “Oh my darlin, oh my darlin, oh my darlin’ Clementine) and one English pop song!  Oh! AND a poem about dreams by Langston Hues. Granted, this all could have been a ploy to score my points on the exam (that totally worked) but I was touched none the less.  This would never have happened in a classroom in the U.S.  Two groups even gave me an apple. (An apple being a traditional Christmas Eve gift because (I think) it represents the heart and feeling).  AND pop-out Christmas cards!

Let’s hear it for the Super Teacher!