son of Goad

Hey, I apologize for lagging on the personal e-mails. Walk past the most obnoxious arcade in your neck of the woods, and imagine that ten times worse, and that's what cybercafes are like here. I think I've come to the end of my appreciation of this form of mass communication, but it is an effective way of forcing me to write down some of these stories, and I figure if they're too annoying, you'll feel free to delete them- it ain't that hard...
Ever since the Malaysian government declared that math and science must be taught in English starting next year, I've become a valuable asset to the Rungus community, and nightly language lessons at my house have taken an intense and energetic and exhausting turn. At the end of the first of these lessons, as we were saying our goodbyes, I tried to teach my three pupils "See you later alligator... After a while crocodile," and they were so eager to learn and perfect this bit of gibberish, that I dutifully consulted the English-Malay dictionary for alligator and crocodile so I could really explain this to them. For ten minutes, we discuss this saying and it seemed they really understood-a very gratifying feeling, so as they were finally walking away, Kate and I wave and yell, "see you later alligators!" and Steven, Jod, and Majintin all turn around and with genuine pride and earnestness yell, "after a while alligators!" and in half defeat and half hysterics, Kate and I cruelly doubled over laughing. Last Thursday I took Kate to the big weekly market for the first time. I had my heart set on buying some fresh fish, but kate was disgusted with the fish scene (as any newcomer would be) and so I had to play it cool, and I found and purchased some live crab. Never before had I purchased a live animal that I would have to kill, and when it finally occurred to me that I was going to have to cook those creatures that were so desperately trying to crawl out of my kitchen sink all morning, I started to feel queezy. Nevertheless, we managed to get through the process of dropping those creatures in boiling hot water, and decided if you're going to eat them, you should have to suffer by killing them yourself. "We are too far removed from the lives of the animals we eat," we said, "and it's time to call a spade a spade." With enthusiasm we declared that "from now on we're going to order 'a slice of tenderloin from the flesh of a cow' rather than a filet mignon, or 'slices of salty pig flesh' rather than bacon." So that evening, our goal for our Malay portion of the lesson was to learn phrases like "Cow flesh," "Pig flesh," "What animal are you going to eat fordinner?" So we are getting through this thinking it's very funny because they are trying to tell us that "saying that makes it sound like you are going to eat a live animal," and to us, that's exactly the point, and then Steven, the most gung-ho of the students starts asking "What do you call son of Goad?" and thinking this was headed toward another one of those religion conversations, we kept acting confused, refusing to say the word "Jesus." We were in this Oh-no!-We're-not-even-going-to-let-this-start frame of mind, but he kept insisting, "What do you call son of Goad? Son of Goad... child ofGoad." Finally after several minutes, we realized that Steven was trying to ask "What do you call son of goat?" With laughs of relief we say "Kid! Kid! Son of goat is kid!" Phew, he just wanted to know the name for a baby goat!