No I Don't Don't Don't Like Wearing a Jacket

t's officially COLD. It has been colllllld for a while but it is now COLD. It has gone from teeth-chattering to teeth-shattering (is that a thing?) It has gone from "I think I will wear a nice, warm jacket" to "I think I will wear everything that I have all at once so that there is no possible chance that the air will touch me." It is so cold that the chalk falls out of my hand when I'm writing on the board because I can't feel my fingers. It is so cold that sometimes, when I get home from work or somewhere, I sit on the floor in the bathroom under my heat lightbulb just to warm up (at least, I'm assuming it's a heat lightbulb cause if you hit the switch twice different lights come on and they are real warm, so if it's not a heat lamp than its just a fire hazard...but I'm still thankful for it). It is so so cold and because there is no indoor heating, there is no escaping it. However, most of the air conditioners in school and around town will spit out air that is warmer than the temperature outside so sometimes rooms can be warm. In fact, one day it got so cold (kind of suddenly) and so many teachers turned their heaters on that the school lost power. That was very sad especially because it resulted in almost no one using their air conditioners anymore (and they leave their doors open. Why, China, whyyyyyy??? ) But anyway, since you can't escape it, you just have to deal with it. I have chosen to deal with it by buying electric hot water bottles, fleece lined leggings, and cute hats, scarves and mittens. Unfortunately for my students, the school has chosen to deal wiht the cold by making winter jackets that a part of their uniform. So, all of the boys have a blue winter jacket and all of the girls have maroon. Unfortunately for me, the cold weather set in just as we were starting the "what are you wearing?" unit and all of the games and activities I had planned are a lot harder to play when everyone is wearing the same exact thing. For example, we were going to play guess who. We had played this game before when they learned "next to, beside, between, behind" so they knew how to play. (I would pick a person and give hints like "she is next to Joe and behind Sally" and then they would say "Cici is next to Joe and behind Sally" etc, etc.) So, without even thinking about the fact that they were all in matching jackets (and that we hadn't learned any of the words for scarves or hats or mittens) I started playing. I said "he is wearing a blue jacket" and as soon as I said it, I realized ALL of the boys in my class were wearing blue jackets. My students, however, did not seems to realize it because they either started gasping and saying "me, me. its me" or they were raising their hands and screaming "wo zhidao!" (i know!), even though it literally could have been any one of them. Thankfully, after a moment of panicking, I realized that their shoes are all different and that not all of them where their uniform pants everyday and I managed to give more specific hints about who it was but their enthusiasm for guessing was very refreshing! (Also, our curriculum is British so instead of teaching them "pants" I am supposed to teach them "trouser". At first, it was a little difficult because I always found myself saying pants by accident but then as my kids started saying it I realized just how adorable it is when they say trouser, especially when one of them runs up and says "i have flower trousers, teacher!") Another rule of the game is that the person that I was hinting about has to say "I am wearing a blue jacket, blah, blah, blah" but because of the cold and the amount of layers that they have to wear to stay warm, they are not just wearing a shirt, a jacket and trousers, they are wearing everything they own. So, instead of having kids stand up and say a simple sentence, my students are standing up and saying "I am wearing 4 shirts. This shirt is red, green, black and white. This shirt is blue. This shirt is grey and white. This shirt is red and black. I am wearing 4 socks (we count the individual sock not the pair).....This one is..... This one is...I am wearing 2 pairs of pants. These pants are.....These pants are...." which makes for a rather long game of guess who but at least they're using their vocabulary!

(Also, I have this one student who just doesn't pay attention. He just can't sit still and he doesn't really like to participate unless it means that he can get up and run around for a little bit (and then hes usually so crazy that he has to sit down not long after he gets up). He doesn't really speak much and when he does he either says exactly what he wants to say ("Louis, do you like riding a bike" "I like three mangos, ok?") or he waits for me to say it first (even though he is perfectly capable of saying it himself!). The other day, we were playing the guess who game and he was doing anything but paying attention. So, I called his name and started walking over to his desk to try and get him to stop whatever he was doing (even though that never actually works) but I guess he thought that I was calling on him because when I got there, he looked at me and said "No teacher. I don't, don't, don't like wearing jacket." It had absolutely nothing to do with what we were doing in class but it was the most English that he had, correctly, used all by himself since the beginning of the semester (which is why I just didn't have the heart to take away one of his behavior stars)! Yay, Louis!)