Otherwise

It was nice being back in the English class today after two weeks of absence. However they all made me jealous, because last week they had everyone bring food from their home countries, and of course that was the week that I was gone in D.C.! However we decided that we will have another party in May the week of Graduation, and they said they would also celebrate my graduation with me! So pretty excited.

We were discussing the weather today, and were trying to communicate the concept of hot, dry, humid, cold, wet, etc. I wrote the word 'Umbrella' on the white board and drew a picture. Do you know how hard it is for Chinese and Koreans to pronounce the word umbrella? We had to spend a few minutes breaking down the syllables just so they could wrap their mouths around 'b,' 'r' and 'l', which just happen to be three of the four hardest consonants for Asians to say! Then I tried to communicate the concept of humidity. Ha! That one was a little easier because they are all from countries that have humidity. But then I made a mistake and wrote a sentence on the white board for us to all say together to practice pronunciation: If it is raining you will need an umbrella, otherwise you will get wet.' First mistake: What is the difference between 'will' and 'is'? Will is future tense of course and is = present tense. However when the majority of your communication is through hand signals and drawn pictures on the white board, how do you communicate this? So we kept saying, 'future,' 'to come,' and tossing our hands hopefully indicating future, and saying, 'is,' 'present' 'now,' and pointing to the ground or our wrists for time that is right now. They eventually got it.


But then all the Chinese began jabbering together and pointing to the white board, and finally one little old lady shuffled up to it and banged her finger on the word 'otherwise.'
Otherwise?
Now you don't think about 'otherwise' being such a profound word or concept, but try explaining it to a bunch of senior-adults whose vocabulary consists mainly of 'good morning teacher, how are you,' and a smattering of other off-the-wall vocabulary words and its quite the challenge!
We tried writing 'because,' and 'then' but they weren't satisfied until I just erased all of the words and wrote 'OR' in big letters.
Altogether it was really fun. However it never ceases to amaze me which words they comprehend immedietly, and which ones befuddle and baffle them endlessly :-)