ESL... ;)

I have started teaching an ESL class in a small community every Thursday night from nine until eleven. If you had told me ten years ago I would be standing in front of ten woman from the ages of forty to sixty and teaching them English, I would have laughed in your face. Every week I stand in front of them I feel like Moses, quietly whispering, "Oh, Lord, I think you have the wrong one for this."

Regardless of how nervous I am, I really love doing it. The women are so much fun.

This week was nothing short of hysterical. I have been trying to teach them the present continuous tense. For example, "What are you doing? I am studying. I am reading. I am sleeping."

After we practiced, read, and did some activities, I decided in the spur of the moment to do an activity with my ladies that I had read about online. The idea of the game is that they have to create as many excuses as possible to explain why a friend can't come to the phone. For the most part, they were basically the same. "She's sleeping. She's working."

Until I got to one student. She makes me laugh every week. She loves to practice what little English she knows, and often it comes out far from perfect. All of her examples were great until I got to the last one. "I'm sorry, she's to suck."

I looked at her, looked at the other women, and then asked her to repeat herself. Surely I heard that incorrectly. "I'm sorry, she's to suck." Ok. That was what she said...

I asked her what she meant, and she smiled and said, "You know. 'To suck.' When you have the baby and you..." she then proceeded to act out nursing a baby.

I looked across the room to see if my male colleague was listening to any of this. Thankfully, he was fully engaged with his student. So, I discreetly wrote the word, "breastfeeding" on the white board (for some reason the term, "nursing" did NOT come to me...until another colleague mentioned it after I told her the story). I quietly said, "We don't say, 'to suck.' We would say this word." I made sure I didn't say it. After all, I didn't want to draw the attention of the men in the room.

Sure enough, five, loud, Portuguese woman looked at the word and simultaneously said, "BREASTFEEDING!" as loud as they could. My male colleague instantly stopped, turned, and covered his ears. I tried to quickly move on, but all of them kept repeating the word. And then proceeded to write it in their notebooks.

:)

I love my crazy, ridiculous life.