the strange & bizarre

I had a strange day today, especially in one of my earlier classes when I was teaching the kids about how to tell time and how you'd say that 10:02 is read as "ten 'o two" and not "ten two" or how 12:00 is read as "twelve o'clock" and not "twelve 'o 'o". So anyway, when I asked the kids to read a certain time that I had written on the board one of the little boys literally stuck his hand down his pants and yelled "It's gochu o'clock!" This really only makes sense if you understand that gochu is the Korean word for the hot red pepper they use to flavor everything. It's also a slang term for the more definitive part of the male anatomy, however strangely appropriate that might seem. So yes, in that context one might understand why he would say that. He was just trying to be funny. But...that's not even getting to the most bizarre part of this little incident. The following dialogue is word for word:

Kang (as he runs around the room with his hand down his pants): It's gochu o'clock!!! It's gochu o'clock!!!
Woojin: No, it's supposed to be penis! (said very matter-of-factly)
Kang: I like gochu juice! I like gochu juice!
Julie: I like teacher juice!

From the mouths of babes ladies and gentlemen, from the mouths of babes. One might question why on earth a boy of Woojin's age would know such a word in English, when I speak English as my first language and I didn't even know that word at his age. And to explain the above thing about the juice, recently the kids have been learning about food words and they learned the word juice as well. To practice using the words in context the kids had to go around the room and say what juice they liked best. When they ran out of juices to name they started saying things like "I like TV juice!" or "I like window juice!" So Kang basically just said that to be funny, not really knowing exactly what it was he was saying of course. But oh my god, I about died when this all went down in my classroom today. The first thing I thought was "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?" And I would have scolded them for it but I know they had no idea what they were talking about or that it was somewhat taboo to say such things, especially here in Korea.

So yeah...that was probably one of the funniest things that I've witnessed in my classroom this entire year, and I've seen a lot of weird things. Tonight I still find myself scratching my head about how in the world Woojin just seems to know all these oddball words that I am pretty sure he was never actually taught...and I don't think his parents speak English at home either. Hmm...