Our Kids

In·sane
[in-seyn]
-adjective
1. mentally deranged; demented; insane.
2. senseless; impractical; totally unsound
3. having an unusual, unexpected, or random quality, behavior, result, pattern, etc.
4. unusual; bizarre.

Is this one of my first posts about our kids?! I guess some introductions are in order! Our mornings are divided into two sections. In the first two hours we have two kindergarten groups. It's 7 boys. You can tell us how sorry you  feel for us in the comment section. Just kidding, they're pretty nice. HA. JUST KIDDING. THEY'RE INSANE.

This is Georgiy (pronounced: Gay-or-gee). He's way taller than the other kids and sometimes the most mature. He's very sneaky though and delivers punches while you're not looking. His English is the best for not having English speaking parents.

This is Vasil! His face just kills us! So cute. This picture was taken one morning this week when he came to school about 15 minutes early and just chilled out in our office with us and played on Audrey's computer. He's so sweet until the other kids get to him. He pronounces 'teacher' like 'cheechar' and we enjoy mocking it all the time.

Matthew. Our little native English speaker. His mom and dad speak to him in English a lot, so he's really far ahead of the other kids. He's the kind of kid that will punch a kid in the face right in front of you and then blame it on someone else. But he's still cute. And very smart. Big imagination.

Roman and Petr. I don't have separate pictures of them so they get to be combined. Roman is definitely one of the sweetest kids we have. He's the most calm and really pays attention to us. And Petr.. What can I say about Petr? I think he has his own world in his head that is probably more interesting than ours.. We're working on getting him to focus a bit more.

This is Matvey (mat-vee). He enjoys making weird noises and mocking us.. :)

Oh, Zahar. This picture should say all it needs to about him. He's definitely one that can't stay in his seat for too long without having a total spazz attack. His energy is explosive sometimes and he loves to be the class clown and make everyone freak out and jump out of their seat. What will we do with him? Oh my. One of the things we absolutely love about him is that he repeats everything we say. Which is exactly what we want him to do. This can be bad sometimes, too.. The other day Audrey was doing something weird and she said, "Oh, Teacher Audrey, you have issues," to herself and Zahar heard this from across the room and said, "Issues? What is 'issues'?" So hilarious. It sounded more like, "EEEsh-yous? Vhat ees eeesch-yous?" He makes us laugh all the time.

These boys are the most difficult part of our day. Every morning we split them into two different classes which changes everyday. If Vasil is feeling especially crazy with Georgiy one morning, they get different classes. It makes it a tad easier for us. And Matvey and Matthew are always in different classes because they both respond to either name (Matvey is Matthew in Russian) and that just confuses everyone involved. It's really hectic for the first two hours.

Us playing Spoons. Enjoy :)

After we get rid of those kids they go home, a new bunch of kids comes in for another two hours. In this section we have another kindergarten group that is just starting to speak and a Basic Reading group that has been in the program for a few semesters already. This kindergarten class has only three kids in it and some of them are my favorites. (Am I not supposed to have favorites? I don't favor them during class or anything, I just enjoy their company a bit more.. Promise.)

This is Nastia. She is super sweet! At the begining of the semester she kind of just stared at us because she had no idea what we were saying, but she has improved so much in the past few weeks. One of our rules that we go over every day is "English only- NO RUSSIAN." She can't say much, but she knows you're not allowed to speak Russian. Whenever she hears Russian, she looks at me with wide eyes and then back at whoever spoke and shakes her head almost violently at them and makes hand motions that clearly mean 'stop, she'll kill you'. Or something along those lines. One time she was talking to her grandma in the hallway after class and I walked by and she freaked out on her grandma for speaking Russian in front of me. Rules are rules, apparently. We also enjoy making faces at each other when Audrey isn't looking :)

This is Egor.

And this is Egor with suspenders.

One of my favorite kids, once again. He's just so cute and he's also improved a bunch in the past few weeks. He's the youngest kid out of the two classes in the two hours, but he doesn't let that affect anything. He loves to give kisses and his favorite subject is kitchen. The first sentence after he gets through the door is "Sorry I'm late."

Typical first three minutes of class:

me, "What should we do today, guys?"

him, "Me no 'guys'. Egor." (points to himself as if I forgot his name)

me, "That's beside the point. What should we do?"

him, "Keetchen nd play game."

me, "Oh, Egor, no kitchen today.."

him, "Yis, keetchen. Bananas."

me, "I don't have any bananas.."

him, "No bananas?"

me, "Nope.."

him, "..." (sad pouty face)

me, "Fine, let's go get the bananas."

And then he's out the door, into the fridge, and back to the classroom with my bananas before I can get the other kids lined up for a quick field trip. He's so freaking cute that I basically let him eat my snack everyday.

The last kid in this group is Sasha. He's the oldest kid we have throughout our whole morning because he started the program a little late. He loves playing board games and he really hates losing them. Well, he has a 1 in 3 chance to win the game. That leaves me with a 2 in 3 chance of him having a freak out and running out of the room. You would think with him being the oldest that this wouldn't be a problem..

Then we have our basic reading kids. These guys are 5-6 years old and really smart. They are easily our favorite class as a whole. Their English is amazing!

Dasha. Very, very smart and always the first to repeat after us. She dresses really cute when we have birthday parties at school.

This is Levon. He's OBSESSED with dinosaurs, alligators, monsters, anything!

Masha is the smallest kid in the second half. Everyone spoils her. Remember on that episode of The Brady Bunch when Jan gets super jealous of Marcia and the lovely "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.." quote was born? It's very typical for us to say "Masha, Masha, Masha.." throughout the day. It fits perfectly.

These guys are Ali and Vlad. This picture just looks super awkward because I cropped it so it's just them. They don't usually sit like a married couple getting their picture taken.. sorry about that. It was a group shot so they're all scrunched in together, promise.

Ali is really smart. I would say that he has the best English out of his class so far. The first thing he does when he gets to school is look for us-even if we're hiding in a back room trying to catch a five minute break.

Vlad is one of the more quiet kids until we start playing games. Then he really lets himself so wild.

One quick thing I want to tell you all about is the romance that recently started here.. Levon and Nastia are very much 'in like' with each other. It's pretty much the cutest thing we HAVE EVER SEEN. It started randomly a few days ago. Levon didn't even know her name at first. We have to keep reminding him that her name is not 'This', it's Nastia. On Wednesday Nastia randomly announced to me that she needed a drink so I let her go out into the little room next to ours and get a drink. After a few seconds I started hearing hushed whispering. I thought it was her grandma because she likes to check up on her sometimes, but a quick look out the door told me otherwise. Levon, Levon, Levon. What shall we do with you?

Egor isn't too pleased with this. No lie, they were literally pulling her in their opposite directions by her arms today. Below is a video of Egor pouting in the corner because they were holding hands. He wouldn't even come back over until Levon's class had left the room. Poor guy!

I have so many favorite videos from these guys..

We were playing Monkey in the Middle today. Lots of fun to be had with these guys. The early morning group would just beat each other up. Honestly.