The long and short of it.
“Teacher! OHhhhhhh!”
“Yes, hello. How is your mind map? Let me see.”
“OOHHHhhh Teacher, ohhh…” Pauses, points excitedly to eye, “Oh Teacher! Uh… eye… eye… Teacher, uhhh.. eye… brow? Oh! Very… buruupdefkjenglongphraseofKorean.”
“Oh, yes. Eyelashes.” I pull out paper where mind map should be but which is just a faux- mind map with circles and scratched, careless lines, flip it over, draw an eyeball and label eye, eyelash, eyebrow, figuring I’d try to sneak a little English anatomy vocabulary in her repertoire… “Eyelashes.”
“Yes! Teacher! Yes! Bverry…”
“Yes, very long, I know. They’re annoying.”
“OOOHHH, LONG, Teacher, long, woooaaaah! Teacher, me, my….”
“Very short, yes.”
Short pause to let the cluster of four students chatter in excited Korean as they marvel about long and short eyelashes, before, “Mind map?”
“Oh, Teacher, no.”
She looks at me for a moment before she shakes one finger, full of sass and I-don’t-speak-Engrishee attitude, “Teacher, no.”