American idiom: That really makes my blood boil!

Ukrainian version: That really eats my liver!

Yep, next time you want to use the idiom “boils my blood” just use “eats my liver” instead. It’s the same thing!

Two funny moments come to my mind from our TESOL time.

Moment #1

This is just an embarrassing moment for me, but it still makes me laugh. Let me introduce you to Doug. This is our TESOL instructor, the same one who taught me back in 2010. He’s a one-of-a-kind teacher.

Doesn’t he look like the kind of guy who deserves a noogie? If you knew him, you would agree. He likes to crack jokes and tease so he really does deserve a noogie.

Well he was being his usual self, teasing me for something or other, doesn’t matter. I’ll just tell you here that I was not in my right mind, I had just returned from a crazy bus ride that lasted all night and I was still reeling from the lack of sleep.

Doug made some smart remark and I simply responded with “Oh I just want to give you a noogie!” At least that’s what I said in my head. What actually came out was not noogie, but wedgie. Two very different things let me tell you. We had a good laugh about that one for quite a while.

Moment #2

Now that I have described Doug a bit you might also sympathize with what happened one day in class. Doug was teaching along, doin his thang. My fellow ruffians, Allison and Joanne, and I had had enough of his jackaboo antics and thought ‘we’ll teach him!’ We stormed the classroom and took over! Mutiny happened in Ternopil!

Yep, this really did happen. We tied him up, duct taped his bearded face, shoved him to the back of the class and took over the classroom. We taught for the rest of the day while he had to just sit there and listen.

The only referendum I have to make to this story is that it was actually Doug’s idea. Yeah, he wanted some fun way to change gears in the teaching and to introduce Allison, Joanne, and I to teaching the class. We taught on what it was like to use English in missions. He talked us into the mutiny idea, but we sure enjoyed doing it though!

Funny moment from our last week of English For Missions.

We were watching a few videos on line dancing during our break (I don’t remember how we got onto that topic.) I looked over at Valya and said, “Valya you would make a great cowgirl.” She had started to walk toward the door but stopped and gave me a confused look. “This has something to do with cows? Cow and girl?”

We all burst into laughter as we imagined the sort of thoughts that were going through Valya’s mind. We explained that a cowboy and cowgirl are people who work with cows, not look like cows. Apparently she always wondered why we said cowboys…

We enjoy laughing in class, everyone should be able to laugh while they learn.

Valya (our EFM student) and I enjoy having fun in class. I often employ the use of games to help in teaching. One such game I use is called Mad Chatter (I think, I forgot). Basically you get a word, you have to describe the word, and the other person/team has to guess the word.

We played this game recently and Valya was the one describing words for me. The theme was “Rooms.”

“A place where there are pots and pans and you cook in this room” Kitchen

“A place where you sleep” Bedroom

“The place where you rest and take it easy” ??? “When you come home after a long day and you just want to relax in this room” ???

I was at a lost at this point. She finally had to show the word to me. Restroom! Of course! I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Once she discovered that this was another word for bathroom she thought it was pretty funny too. I proceeded to tell her of a few other names for the place in which we rest. The John, the watercloset, Mrs. Murphy, lavatory, ladies room, the facilities, potty… the list could go on. Why do we have so many names for such a small rather dirty room? Just another fun moment in the life of English for Missions!

Here is a fun video from our evening English for Missions class!
Students are acting out “the body” trying to accomplish a task. This is what happens when there is no unity in the body…