Niki-néni

I teach English. I think I metioned it before, but I don't think I told you that I am not a particularly good English teacher. Sure, I can speak the language but, teaching someone words, sentence structure, comprehension, not so much. Each class gives me cold sweats. Yet, I have no excuse not to as it's only three hours a week out of my life.

On Mondays, I have an hour lession with three ten year old girls. They call me Niki-néni (The equivalent to Ma'am, literally auntie-Niki.) I asked them not to call me that and explained that's my mom's name, not mine. They didn't get it. They only speak in the formal tense to me and for an English speaker it can be somewhat confusing to figure out who the hell they're talking about. Third person singular when obviously, I am second person informal, duh.

(btw, this is a picture of an Hungarian-néni...)

These girls are insane in the fidgety, ten year old, I can't stop talking to my friends, girly way. They giggle and talk while I'm talking and they're flunking English. It makes me feel old as I just want to pull my hair while yelling, "THIS IS WHY YOU'RE FLUNKING. SHUT UP ALREADY." But they're also sweet in that naive, no social graces way of children, for example, when discussing age they reassured me by saying, "29 isn't THAT old, Niki-néni."

Thanks, girls, Utah Phillips was right, "kids are assholes!"