I have new friends!!! (And they’re all 2)

For the past few weeks I’ve been volunteering at a local preschool teaching english to two year olds! I’ve worked with little little kids since I was 12 so I’m really used to dealing with tears and snot and pushing, but the first day I went to go help out I absolutely HATED IT.

1.Kids suck at responding to things when they don’t know you.

2.I’m not good at Spanish which means I’m also not good at Spanish when you are physically unable to pronounce R’s and S’s

I show up the first day all like, “oh I probably have the same spanish knowledge of a 2-year-old, let’s do this.” NOPE. Anything I tried to say to them was greeted with a look of, “are you having a stroke?” I couldn’t tell if they just weren’t responding to me because they didn’t know me and I was some random American chick who spoke like a cavewoman or because I was speaking nonsense. It was probably a combination of both.

I left the first day accomplishing nothing besides getting a saliva soaked hairbrush stuck in my hair for like 20 minutes. Oh, that’s another side note. I forgot how much kids put into their mouths. LITERALLY EVERYTHING. There is not one toy in that classroom that has not been in at least 5 kids mouths.

Anyways. My third day there I was singing to them the song about the 5 monkeys jumping on the bed, praying that they would at least pay attention even though they clearly had no idea what I was talking about. Not like I can even compete with the Spanish songs the teacher sings. There’s one about a crocodile killing children. I don’t have anything that hard core.

So I finish the song and they kind of look at me like, “seriously, that’s all you got?” And I sit back in the corner with Luca who just cries the whole day, every day, totally defeated. Luca gave me this look like, “join the club” (Luca speaks english so he get’s me on an emotional level). BUT afterwards when we’re going out to the garden to play some sweet games, Olivia comes up to me and says,

“Los Monos.”

Monos means monkeys. She understood what I was saying!!!! BABY GENIUS! She made me sing her the song about 500 more times and boy, was she cracking up. That song’s hilarious.

Me and the kids are all homies now. I walk in and they all run up to me and want to tell me just how red their car is or show me how many blocks they can fit in their mouth (David always wins with 4. That kids going to be the man when he grows up.) Adrien and I even have this inside joke where we pretend to eat each other’s pants. Olivia still makes me sing the monkey song 10 times every day and I’m so over it. She should really get on with her life. Pablo still owes me money.

Kids are the best, guys.