Caveat: White men come and ruin Mesopotamia

Last Friday, on a whim (and because I had a class in my schedule that I hadn't planned for), I gave some 2nd and 3rd grade elementary students some pseudo-TOEFL-style speaking questions. Yun (a 2nd grade prodigy of sorts) attempted to answer the question, "What is your favorite type of museum?" This is an actual TOEFL-style question which I normally use with advanced 5th and 6th graders or even mid-level middle schoolers, and I was quite surprised at how well Yun met the challenge. He took some notes and planned his idea, and patters on quite successfully for the allotted 45 seconds.

What he says near the end about Mesopotamians is rather funny in a sad, "wow that's still going on" way – hard to catch it, I know – here is a transcription based on my having had access to his notes.

But later, white men come and ruin Mesopotamia, So today Mesopotamia's museum is not stay their seat. 

His use of the term "white men" might seem odd, but in fact it's just a direct, naive, dictionary-driven translation of the Korean 백인 (literally white-man), which has a similar semantic scope. He means Europeans.

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

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