Sitting the bus

In Chinese, you say you sit the bus, sit the airplane, etc, when you're riding in something but not driving it. And students usually directly translate the Chinese, no matter how many times you tell them you ride the bus.

This got pretty funny when we read about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They finally learned that you can't just say "sit the bus" but they started with "sit on the bus." Then we talked about sitting in the front of the bus, but about half of the students wrote on their mid-term:

Rosa Parks sat in front of the bus.

That didn't work so well.