This is the Story of a Grape

Little by little, I hope to fill you in on some of the going-on's of the past couple weeks. However, for the time being, I present to you, the story of... the grape.

I will preface this story with an explanation that grapes here are generally a good deal larger than the grapes known to us in the states. Also, this story would be much better with hand gestures and facial expressions. But use your imagination.

*ah-hem*

Each day proves itself to be a beautiful construction of many small, entertaining, interesting, humorous, touching, confusing, frustrating, thought-provoking, just down right funny segments. Friday was no different.

Here is a small sampling. My students are normally quite loud. This is just a fact. And most of them arrive a good deal of time before class begins. This gives them lots of time to get their loudness out before class begins. (Yeah right!) On Friday, the loudness was coming out in a new way. As I was getting things situated in the classroom, students kept running to the back of the room, looking into one student's school bag, throwing back their heads with a cry, covering their noses with both hands, and then running around the room in circles, simultaneously laughing and screaming out in Chinese.

I honestly didn't think it was anything of consequence as the students are always making a game or excitement out of one ordinary thing or another. I figured it was, if anything, maybe a smelly sock.

The students were impressively quietly at their seats before I did my final countdown to the beginning of class, so the suspicious reaction to the bag was entirely forgotten... until break time.

At break time, the interest in the bag renewed itself. It would be significant to note here that when there is a great deal of to-do going on in Chinese, it's rather difficult to get anything you say in English to be understood, much less any response given to you in English. Walking back to the bag to take a look at it myself, two boys, one to whom the culprit bag belonged, had grabbed their hands FULL of tissues and kept taking "goes" (coming within a few inches of the bag, but never actually touching it) at the bag, before reeling back with a mixture of repulsiveness and glee. I asked again what was inside the bag, but again received no response I could understand. I took the bag and looked in it. The students went NUTS. All I saw were tissues stuffed down in a side pocket. I decided that it couldn't be THAT bad, and reached down into the pocket to pull out the mystery what-not. The kids went MORE nuts. Pulling out my hand, I saw I was holding a BUNCH of tissues, and on the tissues was, icky, browish unidifiable something. Definitely gross. Looking down into the pocket, I saw there was still a chunk of something, but before I gagged, I had to get what was in my hand OUT of my hand. I didn't do a smell check, I just ran to the bathroom (right next door to our classroom) to throw it all away.

Stepping right back into the classroom, everyone's attention was not-surprisingly still on the bag, eye brows up, jaws dropped, lots of noise. I picked the bag back up. "What is it?" *no response... just continued squeals of grossed-out-ness* "What is that inside the bag?" I was definitely using my teacher voice. If it was something outrageously gross, I needed to hear it. I didn't want to pull it out to find out for sure.

Finally, I understood someone saying, "Grape." "What?" "It is a grape!" "It's just a GRAPE?!" I said throwing back my head with relief, "Well, then, I'll just throw it away." I reached down with my bare hand, got a two finger grip on this soft, rottening, LARGE "grape" and pulled it out. This grape had seen better days. In fact, had I not been told that it was a grape, I probably would NOT have guessed that. I probably would have still considered it something that had been through a digestion tract. Granted, pretty gross. But still, I thought it was ridiculous the commotion this grape had caused. And I doubt I even have to explain the students' reaction to my holding, in my bare hand, this cause of so much clamor. You can imagine that part.

As I, the great, brave, problem-solving teacher (yeah right!) marched to flush the replusive item down the toilet, I felt a tickle on my thumb. Oh dear. Yeah, the grape was CRAWLING with MAGGOTS! ...and these maggots were starting to crawl on ME! Upon realizing this, I actually let go of the "grape" as quickly as I could, hurling it into a toilet from a distance, and ran away. I ran to the sinks and washed my hands REALLY well, but still felt like I had little white grubby things crawling on me. I went back into the room and handed Charlie his bag. He made some protest, mentioning "bugs." I'm afraid I was rather unsympathetic. I said, "Charlie, yes, there are bugs in your bag. You will have to wash it." Charlie cracks me up. I wish you could all meet him. He's just a really good kid. And he's a clown. There was still more commotion in trying to get Charlie to touch his bag, but now you've gotten the gist of this story... about a grape. We were soon able to move onto second period (Bible time!) and had a great class. But that's another story.