When I ask students about how the year started, the reply is mostly: 'Well!'
Some shrug, but I can't recall anyone having a bad start - fortunately.
Barely three weeks have passed since the first day of the year, now the roofs are covered with a thin, white blanket again. I have already encountered many new faces, all the while sitting at home. Once more, I greeted some old students; without meeting the threshold. Surely, I heard some good stories and learnt interesting things during these classes. But when asked how I was doing, yesterday evening I only gave the two-letter answer.
(Really, I typed eight letters: Likewise.)
In the attempt to summarize these days, the following memories emerged:
The Spanish idiom ‘a quien madruga dios le ayuda’, equivalent to ' the early bird catches the worm’, became part of my active Spanish vocabulary, as I have started to give classes at 7 in the morning, three times a week. I have also learnt the Italian version, ‘Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca’, which literally translates to English as: The morning has gold in its mouth.
A word by word translation of the Hungarian proverb is: ‘Who rises early, earns gold.’
In the morning the other day, I caught myself mimicking the different sounds of a chicken and a duck while trying to explain which bird is which, to a student who is nearly 30 years old. For starters, I kicked off by crowing like a rooster.
As a matter of fact, that student is about to become a primary and secondary school teacher, and we ended the class with a good laugh.
“ … , is a short-acting medication that results in a decreased level of consciousness and a lack of memory for events.”
I learnt that through a conversation with a new student, which was interrupted by their feline companion jumping on the desk. Her partner works in healthcare, hence the name of their cat, an anesthetic drug.
Other notable moments involved kids and adults debating, with kids and adults respectively, about whether the Rubik’s cube is a toy or a game (What do you think?), executives in bathing robes, and a student from Colombia speaking English with a French accent.
All of the above happened with me at the same desk, on the same chair, doing the same thing the whole time. And I was foolish enough to say, there is nothing special happening with me lately, when I am full of gratitude.
Let’s have a nice weekend!