This is my super awesome private student, Tommy! He is in the 3rd grade. We see each other for 1 1/2 hours every week.

He is definitely a little crazy, but he is a really sweet kid. Almost every class he brings me what he calls "Christmas presents." He always tells me that I have to wait until Christmas to unwrap them, but half way through the class I tell him that I can't wait anymore! Then he'll hide under the table, and I unwrap my gift lol.

My favorite gift that he gave me was these Plants and Zombies trading cards. Plants and Zombies is a super popular video game here with the kids. I love the scuba-driver zombie with the big fish- it's so random lol. They also have a Michael Jackson zombie card that I saw one time...I gotta get my hands on that.... I think the plants are a little lame though.

I made the mistake of telling some of my students that I had these cards and they convinced me to trade some pogs for the cards. Worst trade ever!!! The pogs are terrible.





















Tommy also gave me this really cool fruit one time, I have never seen it in the states but it is delicious! At first I tried to bite into it and it was hard and disgusting...I couldn't figure out why anyone would like it. Then I started dissecting it and found that the meat is actually on the inside- it's the white part in the picture. It's really sweet and juicy!

I tried to give Tommy a little reward like 3 times and he will never accept it. I asked him why, and he said because you are the teacher! Sheesh, it was just a piece of chocolate!


I think that Tommy is super creative and it makes giving him lessons much easier. I'll just ask him to tell me a story about something and he always comes up with one really quickly, although I started to realize that he just Simpsons episodes that he's seen and molds them into my prompt. His parents allow him to watch the Simpsons for 30 minutes a day, and that's all the TV he's allowed to watch. I think he has learned a lot of English from the Simpsons though- he can understand almost everything I say!

We have an ongoing joke together about the ill-fate of all his grandmothers animals. It all started early on in our sessions when I asked him what he had done the previous weekend, and he told me that he went to his grandmother's house. I asked him what he did there. He told me that he helped his grandmother feed her pig. I asked him what they fed her pig. He told me that they fed the pig dumplings! I was like really?? He said yes, except a bad thing happened because his grandmother called him on the cell phone the next day and told him that the pig died. It was so unexpected that I burst out laughing and couldn't stop for like 2 minutes. Then he told me her other pig died too because it was old.

I don't know if this first story was true or not, but now all her other animals are dropping like flies. For example, she bought some new fish for the fish tank- her cats ate the fish- but the fish had a disease- so the cats died too. The way he tells the stories are so funny....

He also makes some pretty crazy comics which he translates for me. It's a little hard to see, but this one is about Automan and Plungerman...I think one of them gets thrown in the toilet or something and it explodes and all the "doodoo" as my kids would like to say flies out of the toilet. Lovely.


Well that's Tommy, one of many really awesome kids here :)