Again, I’m reminded that many Koreans find my age more disconcerting or unexpected than just my foreignness, per se. Age means so much, here, and such different things than in the West. Not all good, not all bad. Just very different. I struggle with how best to present it, even to my students, when they exhibit so much interest in it. Morbid-seeming interest, from an American cultural perspective.
I’m not that old, really, but my excessively grey hair makes faking it impossible, as I’ve mentioned before in this blog. A self-respecting Korean with my “problem” would be dying his hair, 100% guaranteed.
Friday evening. Two girls, maybe 4th grade, walking arm-in-arm in the 3rd floor lounge. I’m sitting on the sofa, on a break between classes, and avoiding the staff-room downstairs, as I sometimes do between classes, functioning instead as a sort of unofficial hall-monitor. I don’t know the girls, which means they’re probably lower- or intermediate-level (since I have, almost exclusively, the most advanced classes). I’m known by many of the students at LBridge as the “alligator teacher,” because of my use of toy alligators as in-class diversions and props (see Sydney’s picture, for example).
Shy Girl, exaggerated whisper: “…alligator teacher!”
They stop and stand in front of me.
Brave Girl: “What is your name?”
Jared: “Jared. What’s your name?”
Brave Girl: “I’m Emily. … How old are you?”
Jared: “I’m 793.”
Pause. Rolled eyes.
Emily: “Not possible.” [This is pretty good language processing, for the level of students I suspect these two are.]
Jared: “OK. I’m 43.”
Emily: “Ohhh. You have young face.”
Jared: “Thank you.”
Shy Girl: “Old hair.” She reaches out and touches, and then they run away.
Emily, calling out: “Bye, teacher.”
