Andrushka

Tonight in my ELL¹ class, we talked about Halloween, All Saints' Day, Samhain, etc. I love these students so much. They ask great questions, which is to say, ones to which I have at least some answer and yet still invite further investigation. What's best is that the holiday opened up a way to talk about beliefs in our secular classroom in a very non-dogmatic way. Also, I'd brought candy and apparently some of my students don't eat before class. Later, after we'd done enough grammar exercises for the night and taken our quiz, I had them practice wh- questions by allowing them to ask me anything. It's a great rapport-building exercise and I only answer grammatically correct questions, which gives some incentive to practice good form. Anyway, the first question was "Why don't you married?" Given this exercise, most classes eventually ask this question, but these precocious noodles² are more upfront than most. When we'd arrived at "Why aren't you married," I told them that the problem is inherent in the sacrament³; it takes two and I haven't got my numero dos. Salvador suggested Maria and it took about five minutes to get the class on track after that. After class, I walked home again with Natasha, my Russian student, her husband, and their twin infants. They live on 11^th and Washington, so our paths coincide for a while. Professionally, he is, according to his wife, "a mice killer." No, that is not the same as an exterminator; he's actually a bio-chemistry researcher at UNL. For being guilty of crimes against the most intelligent lifeforms on the planet, he's a really great guy. They're the sort of couple one would love to do couple type things with if they were only paired off themselves. You will notice though that there is a complete lack of *sigh* here. Why? I don't know. For now I'm quite alright with my "don't married" status. And if this couple can't inspire matrimony-envy, nothing will. All in all, it's been a good All Hallows' Eve⁴. ¹ I object to ESL and EFL as misnomers, so for now I'm going with English for Language Learners ² Rotini. ³ Of course I didn't use those terms silly, I do know how to communicate despite the tenor of my last post. ⁴ What can I say? I just love footnotes and I found the html tag for superscript.