The Laughter is Healing

According to one of my students’ notebooks.

Sometimes Engrish is very profound.

The class started out terribly, as some classes do. I could just feel it: that vacuum of energy from both me and the students. I wanted to be home in bed reading Franny Billingsley’s Chime and they wanted to be somewhere where I wasn’t speaking English at them. But we were both there and we had 50 minutes and there was nothing to do but shoulder on.

So I wrote the verb (“study”) on the board and they copied their adverbs around it. And what adverbs they were!

How do you study?

Sorrowfully. Excessively. Perfectly. Frequently. Smugly. Fightingly! Elegantly. Sexily.

Wait, seriously? John, Neo, Marine—did you write “elegantly” and “sexily? You just copied that from last class. Marine, how do you study eleg—”

Marine demonstrated, and believe me, ladies and gentlemen, that boy can study elegantly. I’m not sure about sexily, though, because as soon as he started unzipping his coat with a suggestive smirk we all were laughing too hard to really think about modifiers.

My boys: who no longer have to take the TOEFL!
As they say, "We have escaped from TOEFL." And as
Palash (far left) says, "We no longer have To-Fail." Get it?!

Slice of home

Oppa and Unnie make me laugh.