::A Geek in Korea::

I have wonderfully confusing conversations with my Kindergarten students all the time. They know only a handful of words in English, but their Korean vocabulary is at a level that is easy for me to understand…most of the time. The odd thing about speaking or listening to kindergarten children is that you often have to answer, or listen to, the very odd things they say, and very often they move from one topic to another with no logical connection that I can find.

For example, one of my students I like the most has a few quirks about her. She has absolutely only one volume, which is "Screaming at the park" loud. She has no "inside" voice, so it doesn’t matter if you are next to her, or across the room, she speaks to you at the same volume. We practice "whispering" occasionally in class together, but she doesn’t seem to have gotten the point. I’ve also got a mute student that hasn’t talked for a month in class, so she sort of balances things out.

The loud student also has no concept of the idea that while I work at a school, I don’t know the teachers at all the other schools in Korea. She will frequently go on about students in her class at her other "everyday" Korean kindergarten. She’ll talk about how this student said or did something, or about what one of her teachers told her. But the way she explains it, she’ll expect me to know who said it to her, and explain what they meant, or tell me what they will be doing tomorrow in that school. I’ve gotten used to just pretending I know what she’s talking about instead of trying to explain why I wouldn’t know. It’s just easier for both of us to maintain the status quo.

Another student told me today that I smell, but that I smell better than his other teacher. He said his teacher smelled, "Like cigarettes." He then detailed the smells of all his other teachers. I could only nod and wonder in awe.This boy also claimed the nasty stink floating around class in the class, proudly proclaiming it his fart. He might have been a bit obessed with smells today.

I can only imagine the strange things I used to tell teachers all the time that they grinned at.