'Zamish' and the confusion thereof

Even though our kids are pretty Westernized, there are still some interesting cultural and linguistic barriers to get over. We were talking the other day about how the kids say 'sheep' the same as 'ship,' and sometimes they get sloppy with the end vowel which really results in an interesting word to catch out of the corner of your ear! 'Salt' is pronounced 'sote,' and there was of course that one end of term where the whole school cheerfully sang, "He's got the whole wo-owd, in His hands!" I heard a younger sister asking her big brother to get her a 'bauw' to play with after supper one night, and of course once a week the standard 'flied lice' joke comes up when we see the soy sauce on the boards. Last week the cook shared with us one of my personal favorites--the kitchen guys had carefully labeled a jar of old oil 'Dip fly only' instead of deep fry only! Bethany also told us that one of our cooks who has been making pizza on Friday nights for years was under the impression that he used "Isarella cheese" to do so. It's a good thing that there are moments of laughter to remind you not to take life to seriously!

Things in my classroom continue to be busy; trying to learn my new students, sort out some interesting failures to add and subtract among my seventh graders, and hammer in my expectations so I won't have to fight so hard the next two terms are all keeping me pretty busy. This week is the last full week before half-term, so I'll be planning out my science exam and getting ready to start history. The other challenge with this week is getting things to a stopping point so I'm chasing as few as possible people for homework next Monday and Tuesday... Week 5, here we come!