Conversation (Class) Stopper

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I teach older students, and while they spent the first 7 months staring at me like I was some kind of freakish, yet boring, disaster occuring before them, they have recently warmed up to me quite a bit. They talk in class, willingly, which is helpful considering it's a conversation class. One kid even asked if he could call himself "Steak," a decision I fully supported. I dig cool nicknames (a penchant that led to my own unfortunate nickname: Cobra).

Currently, we are discussing international food and we've been bonding over mutual disgust of headcheese. While matching "exotic" foods to their international locations, I asked if they liked the Asian foods, like fugu (the blowfish that nearly killed Homer that one time). Later I asked them to tell me the names of the countries in Chinese, when suddenly one of my students asked me, "Teacher, does America like Taiwan or China?"

To this my eloquent and studied reply was, "Shit."

I tried to recover with a "I really don't know. It depends on the day." But really, how to explain that our tentative allegiance to Taiwan will evaporate as soon as economic benefits of backing China outweigh those of Taiwan, and that day seems to be fast approaching? Plus, this same kid five minutes before asked me what a rat was, so the vocabulary for a discussion of this depth wasn't readily available.

I'm curious what he'll ask next week...