Today, totally inexplicably, Thomas started crying. He’s a new student, only been at my school a month yet. He’d cried before, during his first week, when he had no idea what a “g” sound corresponded to in a spelling test where numbers 4 through 10 were all “g” words. He gave up, moaning dramatically into his test sheet, and cried after getting his score of 15%. His crying today was hard to explain, because on his test he’d gotten a 90, his best score to date.

The previous time, Thomas was the third to cry that day. Ray had launched into tears in that same class after I’d found out he missed his friend, Peter, who was absent. (Earlier, he was uncharacteristically mute, but smiling. He only started crying once I asked if he missed Peter. Go me.)

There was also Ian earlier on. A very young and shy student, he was also the sole representative of seven sign-ups to arrive for a new ESL class. The decision was made to proceed anyway, but as soon as his mother left the room, the tears started rolling and he began trembling. He continued to cry silently for the next hour. I finally got him to open up some, but when he spoke, it was only the barest whisper of a voice. That pretty much described his behavior for the next two weeks, too.

While I didn’t actually do anything to make them cry, it still wasn’t too fun. My attempts to console by saying “沒關係” (”no problem”) were never enough, so a secretary was required to come comfort them.