Yes. No. Eat!

I had my first day as a pre-school teacher yesterday. It went pretty well. I like the kids, most of them are very well behaved. One little girl was sick and one little girl had a birthday. It's pretty interesting - discipline is SO VERY DIFFERENT! I'll get in to that with more detail when I have a firmer grasp on it.

They serve the kids snack, lunch, and an afternoon snack. Some of the kids don't like the food. Yuko, the other english speaking instructor helped me out a bit - she had done something I was doing...

The little kids would say something like "Me no like" or some of them "I don't like this" or some of them would mumble something knowing I don't understand czech. I would respond along the lines " You don't like it? Yes, ok, you can get up then" and smile. And they wouldn't move and wouldn't look very happy. So I would say, "Yes, you can get up now." And then wait but the wouldn't move, so I figured they didn't know what I was saying, and would scoot their chair for them and repeat, "You can get up now".

There was a little boy who wasn't behaving. He kept hitting another boy and when I would ask him to stop he would point his fingers in my face and shoot me. I would take his hand and hold it and say, "No, I really don't like it when you do that, please stop." And he'd shoot me over and over and over again. It was rather annoying, and I would repeat myself, "No, you need to stop that. I don't like it when you shoot me." But to no avail.

Here's what I forgot - there is a word in czech that sounds like NO. That word is YES. (The word for yes is actually ano, which sounds like 'uh, no', but is often just shortened to 'no'.) So I was actually telling him, yes everytime he'd hit or shoot me.

And YES is actually a word too (there is where Yuko clued me in). It is the command form of EAT, it's the form you would only use with a child or a dog and not an adult. So all those children who were asking me to be excused were being told EAT! and then you can get up.