Adventures in Coloring with Azerbaijani School Children

My first assignment is, yes, to teach English. But for me, what is far more rewarding, is teaching kids how to be creative, and how to think for themselves. Tomorrow is my second Azerbaijani Christmas Pageant. (No, they don't celebrate Christmas here. But I don't know what else to call it. All of my teachers call it, "Ingilis Gecesi" which means "English Night" but seeing as how it is at 1pm, that seems wrong. So, I have my own little pet name for it). And in honor of the occasion, I'm having the kids do some coloring to decorate the walls.

Now, coloring is not something kids here are necessarily used to. Markers are kind of expensive, and um, terrible, and you don't find published coloring books around. So, in comes Stephanie Teacher with a shoe box full of American markers and chaos ensues. I hand each child a half-size paper with a black and white outline of either a snowman, a tree, a bell, or a child dressed in winter clothes. These are the questions I get/conversations I hear:
Child: "What do I do with this?" Me: "Color it." Child: "Color it?" Me: "Yes, color it."
Child 1: "What color should I color the tree?" Me: "Any color you want!" Child 2: "Trees are green, it must be green." Child 1: "She is right. Very clever. It will be green."
Child (with snowman): "Do I color the arms?"
Child (with bell): "Should I color the bow?"
Child (with tree): "Can I color the star on top red?"
Child (with child-image coloring page): "This is a boy. I must color him blue."
Child (with with child-image): "Do I draw a face?" Me: "I think you should." Child: "Eyes, a nose, do I draw ears?" Me: "If you want." Child: "Hm."
Me: "Don't forget to write your name so you can remember it is yours and take it home!" (several) Children: "Do we write our last names?" Me: "It's up to you." Children: *confusion.

I think you get the idea. My counterpart and I found it terribly funny that not a single child could make their own decision about what color to color their pictures. The word we use to ask permission in Azerbaijani is "olar," and all I heard all day was, "olar muellime?!" Which essentially means, "can I do THIS, teacher?" Over and over and over again. And they were all quite frustrated when all I kept saying was, "nece isteyirsen" or, "as you wish..." They are used to being told what to do, even in art class. But generally, I refuse to do that, and insist they decide for themselves. Decisions are difficult (trust me, I know). And even a decision as simple as picking what color to color a tree can be terrifying - especially if you aren't used to having that kind of power. It's a little tiny crisis moment for them, one that I take an immense amount of joy from.