Lunch With Little Devils

I have now been given the great pleasure of eating lunch with my kindergarteners. For the past 6 months, I had been eating with my Korean Grandmother Cook and the Director. NOW, I have been downgraded to the messy, crying, nose picking, food on the floor, crazy 3-6 year olds. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!!!

The first week it was pretty awkward, I don’t know how to handle little kids eating. I mean, don’t get me wrong.. I did a LITTLE babysitting in my day, I’ve been around a lot of little brats before. But I am an English teacher, not a kid cleaner-upper-feeder-mother yet! I am a little upset at this, however I refuse to complain because I am getting fed for free.. although now it is not so much for free but my payment is being a slave to the children.

I am expected to have conversations with these breathing-eating animals while they shovel food into their tiny mouths with spoons and beginners chopsticks. They hardly talk to each other they’re so busy with their food, how can I make them pay attention to me?! It has been about a month that I have been doing this now, it is getting a little easier… with the occasional gagging.


It can be quite funny, I have some teachers who like my help, some teachers who refuse to let me help dish out the food because I always give too much or too little or don’t put it in the ‘correct’ whole in the tray (crazy Koreans :) ). I also think that my horrible chopstick skills may be at fault.
The kids can crack me up at times too. In my 3 year old class (western age, not eastern) there was a little girl with food in her mouth and cheeks puffed out like chipmunks who started crying. I pointed to her after a minute (because it started to get real awkward because the Korean teacher just ignored her) and asked what was wrong with her. The Korean teacher looked at me and said, “Food spicy, ha ha ha”. I about died, I felt so bad for the girl. I didn’t know they would be force fed spicy food, no wonder they’re so immune to it when they get older!

In another class, I wanted more room to eat because I felt all crowded with the little kids surrounding me, I tried to scoot two kids down the table a bit, one looked all upset, so the teacher told me to sit in between the two kids, the little boy started crying ( I was obviously separating him and his girlfriend ), so the Korean teacher told me to move to the other side of him, he started BAWLING. This is one of my favorite kiddos mind you, he was once called Dragon --raaawr-- until a couple of weeks later he decided to change his name to Brian (lame!), he is 4 years old and always happy. My heart cracked a little!