A Few Quick Anecdotes

Yesterday was a blogger's dream. I had a ton of hilarious things happen to me and here's just a few:
1. I began teaching. 75% of my classes were fantastic. The other 25% was an hour and a half of six year olds who don't understand a word of English and have more energy than any kids I have ever seen. A few highlights from that class were:
a) A sandal flying by my face twice. Apparently they use them like boomerangs.
b) A "slow" kid who sat in the corner and broke the window shades and picked his nose and put it onto my teacher's book when I asked him if he did his homework.
c) Announcing homework five minutes before the end of class and then promptly having fifteen kids rush for the door. Apparently it's like Pavlov's dog. They are so conditioned to leaving when told their homework that they don't look at the time. I literally had to block the door and fight over fifteen kids...who are a lot stronger than they appear.
d) Just when the class couldn't get any worse I let everyone out and one kid pushed another who fell into a little girl. The little girl proceeded to cry hysterically for ten minutes. I brought her to the office since, again, she didn't speak any English and didn't understand "are you okay." She was okay. I wasn't though.

2. On my lunch break I met the teacher whose classes I took over and he said to me, "this afternoon you've got a kid who is obsessed with bananas." I just nodded and said, "Sounds good." Sure enough in my third class I had everyone introduce themselves and this awkward 13-year-old in the corner says "My name is Banana Boy." After that literally every other word out of his mouth was banana.

3. One of my class lesson plans was based around this CD that comes with the book. Sure enough when I put the CD in it was the wrong one. I ad-libbed on the fly and made it work.

4. At the end of the day while teaching a class about natural disasters, a crack of lighting struck outside the window. It was followed by eight hours of pouring rain and lightning.

5. Huyen came over for dinner. I cooked some pasta and after about two bites she announced, "Vietnamese people cannot eat this." More for me.

6. Huyen used my bathroom and walked out holding "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", the book I'm reading. She said to me: "I see you are in the habit of reading on toilet. Me too." I then said, "I thought you don't have a toilet." She replied, "Yes, only at my parent's house."

7. At 9PM Huyen said she must leave. She put on her raincoat, plastic bags around her feet, windbreaker etc. She screamed out, "So dangerous!", laughed, and then took off into the typhoon. Five minutes later she called my cell phone, "I must come back. I am lost and it is very wet."

8. At 12:30 at night I was awoken by knocking on my door. It was Ryan: "Yo, um, our house if flooding." The roof had about six inches of water and was waterfalling down the four flights of stairs into our kitchen. Ryan braved the elements and went on to the roof and cleaned the drain with a hanger. Problem solved...kind of. Two minutes later the drainage pipe in my bathroom ERUPTED with black water. After ten minutes of blowing up in my bathroom it stopped and all was normal.

Good times.