Some more interesting observations! As well as a few clips from my real life of "Kid's Say the Darndest Things"

When learning about procedural adverbs (first, second, then, last, finally...etc.), the students got to choose what they would add to a recipe for their favorite cake. Most picked chocolate, or fruit, but one student must have felt the effect of the lesson on a class held before lunch:

Teacher: "What did you put in your cake?"
Student: "My tongue!"

When doing story planning based on a story about a naughty little girl named Katarina who leans too far over the side of a Chinese junk (traditional boat), and falls into the water and needs to be rescued, the students decided to run the story like this:

The image given to them: Smiling Katarina playing in the water, holding a fish, with a crab latched onto her clothes, and a very angry whale with furrowed eyebrows behind her. [Because it is Asia, the cartoons in our textbooks are much cuter than yours!]

Who: Katarina, a whale, a crab, a fish
Where: The Ocean
What: Katarina's mom is sad. Katarina is dead. The whale is happy.

ai ya!!!

While walking down the road after work, I heard some very cute music playing loudly somewhere nearby. I assumed it to be coming from one of the nearby eateries, or from the people who give out the free fai chun (Chinese new year scrolls with wishes and blessings written on them) on the corners. After looking all around, I realized there was only one source of the music: a garbage truck!    You know how big trucks and commercial vehicles have that terribly annoying "BEEEP BEEEP" while backing up? No, garbage trucks in Asia play super loud, super cute music; the equivalent to what ice cream trucks play in the US. A fellow teacher confirmed it and said that the garbage trucks in her neighborhood in Taiwan played Fur Elise.


Crosswalks, or "Zebra crossings" as they are called under British influence here, have certain frequencies of clicks emitted by the crossing lights. Assumably, this is to help blind people, but if you happen to lift your head from texting on your smartphone, you will realize that it is probably of more help to you! Like I mentioned, everyone is on their smartphones here, and having the clicking for when to cross probably saves thousands of people addicted to their mobile devices.


Some other nuances, courtesy of the former British rule of Hong Kong:

- Subway does not mean train. It means a tunnel you can walk or bike through to go under roads.
- When someone tells you to take "the lift", they mean the elevator.
- A little snack shop on a beach is called a "Tuck Shop" in every other country but America...in the US, its usually a bar anyway.