::A Geek in Korea::

At my first few schools, I hated when Korean teachers were chatty and were obviously talking about someone when they knew that other person couldn’t understand. Using your language to talk bad about a person while they are in the room isn’t cool. It would also annoy me when foreign coworkers would have to talk "down" to me and translate something incredibly witty they said to each other in Korean. I hated feeling like I was "out of the loop" in an office environment, especially when things were being said about me.

Now, however, I’m the foreigner with the best Korean language skills at my school at the moment. I can follow a lot of my coworker’s conversations, and when they aren’t talking about the mundane aspects of single life in Korea, I get to hear some good juicy gossip about the school. They chat about mothers, students, and usually complain about our director. They are really annoyed by the fact that the new camera system in the school will let the director spy on their conversations in the room. The reason is that they talk about the director ever second she is out of the room. Someone’s going to get busted eventually.

Anyway, today, my coworkers were sitting around in the office when one person said to the other, "Someone smells like alcohol in here." Now, I know who they were talking about, and it was obvious someone had a rough night out. They were doing their job well, and there were no other complaints besides the smell. They didn’t even look hung over. They were a little worse for wear, that’s all. It was clear that alcohol was still on someone’s breath, and it just stunk.

The one teacher said, "Uh, yeah, I can smell it too."

I responded in English, "It’s not me."

They laughed, and of course the other foreigners in the room had no context for what I just said, so they just ignored us. The wheel had turned 360 degrees and I can either use my power for good or evil. I’m usually a very inclusive, helpful, "let me offer what I know", sort of person. I’ll try to keep it that way, instead of alienating my foreigner coworkers. I do think my Korean coworkers enjoy having someone "in" on the joke at times and that they say some things for my benefit since they know I understand.