“This is not real.” I can’t recall how many times I’ve uttered those words as I’ve gazed out onto a bizarre, unwonted scene. Tonight specifically hit me hard. I’m in a foreign country, it’s late at night and I hear children screaming. Not screams of fear but screams of undulated joy that only the youth can possess.
I’m sitting on my dorm balcony hiding from people. My room is dark so I can see each human silhouette across the hall. I can imagine each ragged t shirt and mismatched sock, and I can imagine the smell of urine wafting from the dorm bathrooms. I can not see their expressions but I can guess. The children are elated, high on peer interaction and freedom. Their guardians, the Korean task masters, have a vaguely concealed malignance. They are emotionally checked out. Their minds must wander to keep their psyche safe in the chaos. I know this because when I’m in my classroom trying to teach Korean children English on their summer vacation, I have to occasionally check out myself.
“This is not real.” I mutter out loud again. I open my eyes and the scene is still the same. Children running wild and the task masters are slouched over, slowly following them from room to room. Tonight I am hiding in the dark from the children, but tomorrow the hard florescent lights will glare down on me. Every smile, frown and moment of vexation will be blaringly evident to them. There is nowhere for me to hide in this 10 hour a day, 7 days a week English camp. Luckily I can get away with my mercurial moodiness due to my foreignness but the other foreign teachers give me away. I can hear their laughs, songs, and praises from my classroom. **
I love my students and I enjoy teaching but my sensitive system is easily tempered with. Their impulsive shrieks startle me; their whines quicken my heart beat. Their boundless energy envelops my own. But I find such delight in their young glow., in their desire to please and in their desperation to communicate with me.
Since many of my students can not speak a full sentence of English their main lines of communication are through physical gestures and adjectives. In these moments of linguistic desperation I love them the most. Their soft blacks eyes full of expression, their hands repeating the same gesture wildly and their mouths forming incoherent adjective after adjective.
On the most basic level they want to be understood. They want to convey an emotion; they want to tell their story. In these moments my patience is endless, my sensitive system knows no bounds and I sit at my desk and help them find the words. And when the moment of that discovery is made their thin mouths form an O, they light up and exhale “oooooh.” This coo wraps around me and in our moment I have helped give their wild gestures meaning. They have found the words and I have found my meaning.
**note that the author was sick with the flu during this story, therefore author's moodiness was impart due to the fact that said author had a fever and lacked the energy to battle a ten hour (children filled)work day.
