I'm sitting in the computer room at Berlitz. It's free, and awfully close to work -- about 5 steps from the class where I just taught three nine-year-olds to parrot "How was your trip? It was fantastic! What can you do in Puerto Escondido?" A safer location than Playa Zipolite, which my adult classes prefer to discuss -- but right now I'm sharing it with three seven-year-old boys who are having a computer class. So while I type this the speakers on the other computers are shouting "Green! Yellow! Orange!" and "Seven! One! Nine!" or "Shoe! Sock! Sweater!" at about volume 11. What is it with boys and video-game noise levels? And they're all Windows 98 machines.

Miho, who teaches Japanese and English and could teach Spanish if this Berlitz ever decided to have a Spanish track, is currently in Japan and probably inhaling as much sushi and other tasty Japanese fare as she can. I know I would. (We have never gone back to Kyoto for a second go-round with the cronchy roll.) I'm teaching two of her kids classes, the afore-mentioned nine-year-olds, and a Monday-Wednesday class of five-year-olds. And yesterday out of a class of five students I made two of them cry.

"Brown! Pink! Yellow! Purple! White! Pink, pink, pink! Yellow!"

For the past two months or so the school has had these flyers and posters promoting Berlitz's Study Abroad program. For their English program students can study in the U.K., Canada, or the U.S. One of the featured U.S. locations is ... ready for it? ... Redlands. Vacation wonderland of the Inland Empire. Gag me with a two-stroke engine!

"Shoe!"