Chapter 34: "It's so prettyyyy....I want to touch it!"

So, I take a water bottle to every class. It's kind of my comfort object, and also enables me to drink four or five bottles a day without really paying attention. Sometimes I bring juice, but usually just water. Anyways, I do believe now that there is nothing a Korean child desires more than my water bottle.

If you are sitting next to Joanna-Teacher, you will feel an uncontrollable urge to take her bottle from her when she's not paying attention. If it's cold, you'll put it on your neck or on your head or down your shirt. You'll pretend that you're going to drink it, just to freak Teacher out. You'll beg and beg for a drink of hers instead of going to the water cooler yourself. If you are younger, you will even put the cap end in your mouth, and gnaw absently on it while doing listening exercises, until Teacher sees what you are doing and takes it away again. If you are older, you should know what the younger ones have been doing to the water bottle and not touch it at all.

All in all, my water bottle gets handled and sucked on by about twenty different kids during the day. It's no wonder I get sick. On the bright side, my immunity is probably so high now that I'll never have a cold again.

PS. You might pause to wonder why Korean kids think it's perfectly normal to ask for a drink right out of someone's personal water bottle. People are sanitary here, but at the park yesterday I saw an old grandmother sharing an ice cream bar with a little toddler. She bit into the bar, made a yukky face, took the bite out of her mouth, and put it into the kid's mouth. So that might be what it comes from.