29 May 2007
We're very popular among the 11-year-old set.
Came home from another extremely long day at work to find the house littered with children smoking cigarettes.
Okay, so they were chocolate cigarettes that they found when they raided the cupboard. We have chocolate cigarettes from the Netherlands. Or, that is to say, had chocolate cigarettes from the Netherlands.
Dirk and I are fostering a kitten to keep our kitten company, so I've involved the sixth grade set in another round of catsitting because this week is going to be filled with many late nights for Dirk and I.
I don't normally work this much, but with three publication deadlines (newspaper, newspaper, literary journal), over 100 students, and a stack of poetry portfolios breathing down my neck, I thought it would be a good idea to bring in the troops.
The kids were lounging about, doing their math homework or playing poker (okay, Uno), when I walked in. They were worried I'd be angry about the cigarettes, but I laughed and told them about how the same thing happened to Jip and Janneke. I spotted a dead baby bird in a plastic cup on the kitchen table as the little sister of a sixth grader shoved a duct-taped present for the kittens into my hands while dangling a chocolate cigarette on her bottom lip.
One of my students then asked, "Ms. S, can I ask you a personal question?"
"Yes," I said.
"Does Mr. S drink a lot of beer?"
Forehead: slap.
No. The empty beer crate on the balcony is from the party we had on Friday night.
We don't want our apartment to become a student hang out, but it is great that I can bring in the reinforcements because I live in a compound. Now to curtail the sudden social activity-
betholindo at 22:48