Precious Moments #1-2

In an effort to focus mainly on the positive aspects of my experience here, I'm going to start posting various "Precious Moments" that occur in my regular, daily life.

To start, I'm going to rewind a little bit and tell you about one of my most adorable, precious students, Karen. I actually have quite a few favorite moments from Karen, so this post probably should be named "Precious Moments from Karen"
Karen is a boy -- yes, a boy -- in my 4th form class. (Just as an aside, Karen is a boy's name here, but Karine (with the "e" accented) is a girl's name). Karen's been precious from the start, just because he's a really cute kid. He's also one of the two most enthusiastic and bright students in my 4th form. It's hard not to like the kids who are actually excited about learning English because there are, unfortunately, more of them who don't care.

So one precious moment from Karen happened a few weeks ago during class. I forget exactly what the topic was, but he was REALLY excited about answering the questions. In Armenian schools, students traditionally stand up when answering a question. Karen had answered a few questions, of course, and his chair had been knocked on its back two legs. Well, the desks are fairly close together in this classroom so the leaning chair wasn't a major hazard....until Karen sat down very abruptly and somewhat forcefully. The poor kid almost fell out of the chair, but caught himself at the last moment.  The best part about this moment? I was the only one (in a room full of twenty students and one other teacher) to notice! And sure enough, Karen caught my eye as well. He seemed so embarrassed and just gave me this adorable look like "Oh no! She saw!"  Definitely precious.

Precious Moment from Karen #2 actually came the day of the Aussies' visit.  We were in the gymnasium, watching an impromptu volleyball game among some of the older Aussie and Armenian students. In our gym, there are a few big windows that look out onto the school's courtyard. The windows have bars covering them, as most of the glass has fallen/broken out. So all along these windows were the younger Armenian students, watching the volleyball game. I was standing with my new English-speaking Armenian-Australian friend, Serine. Karen was among the kids watching from the windows and I pointed him out to Serine, saying that he was a very bright student. She shout-translated the message to him. His response? (In Armenian) "Tell her that I love her very much!" Needless to say... precious.