Here are some more random highlights of my students being themselves.

This is Hugo. He has not one but two natural helicopter hair patches, which results in him having a natural faux-hawk. It’s terrific.

Apparently this look is catching on.

At the end of the day, we have activity time, and the kids enjoy finally getting a chance to just run around, play, and be wild. Sometimes the girls enjoy performing gymnastic feats.

Like any kid, they look forward to the chance to get out of school by going on a field trip. This was from our field trip last term to a place where the kids got the chance to pretend to be adults doing many different jobs. Naturally, the boys just loved the chance to be cops with guns.

Then there are the times when some kids just can’t help themselves by being naughty. Below is a rather sophisticated way of utilizing English and Chinese translation skills. It was the handy work of none other than the infamous Justin. If only he’d use his powers for good instead of evil. It was funny calling him out on it after a fellow teacher told me she took it from another student during our graded reading class. I had to do my teacherly duty by telling him this was not OK, but on the other hand, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. I mean, really, don’t many kids this age think about things like this? (Full disclosure: I started swearing when I was in 4th grade.). Sorry mom). For anyone looking to expand upon their own curse vocabulary, here you are. Thank you, Justin. I find it amusing, though, that the word “fool” was included in the same category as the other bad words.

Speaking of naughty words, I saw this man wearing this jacket on our recent field trip to the museum and science center. I can see now why kids don’t understand that it’s not good to use English curse words. There doesn’t seem to be much understanding of that from some adults.

China is full of adults wearing clothes that contain weird, random, and incoherent words and phrases. Here is another example from when a friend and I went to the Zhangjiajie Mountains. I don’t know whether this woman was trying to make an ironic statement about schools in China or if she just had no idea what this really says. Either way, it’s entertaining, and I look forward to seeing more.