First graders are funny.

I have one sweet little boy, George, who sits in the back of my 1.3 class. 

George is a twin (which I didn't even know until last week!), and he and his brother Steven had a birthday on Wednesday.

We sang happy birthday to Steven, who is in another class, on Tuesday, and were going to sing happy birthday to George on Tuesday, as well, 

buuuut we ended up having a long-drawn-out and wonderfully funny and confusing mixed-language discussion about whether or not it was George's birthday (he had already celebrated with the February birthdays in his class, which I didn't know until later... as a non-Chinese speaker I'm a little out of the loop sometimes). 

The kids were trying to help me understand that it was just Steven's birthday, not George's, and I was trying to explain what 'twin' means... that if it's Steven's birthday, that means it's George's birthday, too, b/c they were born on the same day...

Anyway, the discussion went on for much longer than planned, and finally Ms. Zheng (my friend and English/Chinese translator for that class) came in, and I asked her to tell George that we'd just sing happy birthday to him the next day, on his actual birthday.

She did, and he smiled a really big and sweet George smile, and we went on with class.

And this is so funny because something was certainly lost in translation of the whole crazy discussion, 

and George went home later that night and told his mom that 

I said he needed to bring me a cake the next day because it was his birthday. :)

His mom, who only speaks Chinese, called Lucy, my English/Chinese co-teacher, to ask about Ms. Cowart's interesting request. 

Thankfully Lucy is very wise, and she told George's mom that he probably just misunderstood me. 

They decided to share Steven's birthday cake/celebration with George's class and bring a little something extra for me just in case. hehe.

So mmhmm I got to eat some cake and a special treat on Wednesday. 

I should request that students bring me cake more often. :) 

 

Also, this week we learned about families and occupations. 

I've been using pictures of my family as examples, and I explained that my mother is a math teacher and my father is a doctor for animals. 

A veteratarian, according to Henderson, who wonders, Dad, if you can come to China and look at his hamster. :) 

I told him I'd ask.