Ladies and gents, she believes she has learned Korean

It was freeeeeeezing tonight (try -11 Celsius), so I decided to take a cab from the department store to the Sou'Frican's place. So I get in and I say my home like a pro: "Bugae Sam-dog, mok ja gol mok, ga-chuseyo" (polite Korean for my "street name, take me").

And the cabbie has me repeat it. Because I am waygookin (foreigner) speaking his native tongue. So I do. And I've been told I say it "adorably." This, I choose to believe.

But then he starts yammering on in Korean. "Mul-a" says me ("I don't know/understand"). Now, usually this stops them in their tracks and we both just figure a way to make do. But he's still going on and on. He pauses, like he's just asked me a very important question. So I say "ketchan-a" ("it's okay"), so he says ketchan-a and suddenly everything is okay again. I get dropped off where I need to go.

I AM KOREAN, YOU GUYZ.

Cultural Differences

After the change to my classes, I am really starting to love one of my classes -- PK4B. They are in the 2nd or 3rd grade and they all speak English pretty well. We've been reading the story "Fireman Bill and the Dragon" this week and I can only cover five pages a day in eighty minutes, so we spend a lot of our time talking about things peripheral to the story.

During one such peripheral conversation today, I asked my students if they had ever seen a fire before. Of course, they all said they had seen one on TV or on the gas range, but one girl, Jackie, raised her hand to tell us a story. Her younger brother, at two (now three), set his grandparents' bed aflame with a lighter! Of course, I had to share the one from when I was two and I set the toaster on fire with a wooden spoon.

Later, we talked about "revenge" and "getting even." I gave them a bunch of examples. I said "If James puts a mouse in Jackie's backpack, what should Jackie do to him?" Everyone was shouting about punching James in the face and stealing his homework. Don't worry, I tried to reign the conversation back into building good people by asking if getting James back was okay, a good thing for Jackie to do. But I think I really lost them here because everyone is shouting yes! One girl, Molly, said "My mom told me if someone hits me, I should hit them back two times."

Uhhhh...cultural differences?