I’ve had a very interesting first few months teaching mostly Chinese students at an international school in Beijing. Like any place where one is in constant contact with tiny children (tiny children who sometimes have vastly different views than you due to cultural differences), it is hard to go through a day without something unusual happening to you or around you.

Take my friend Armen, for example. On a daily basis I can enjoy watching the entire storyline of Star Wars reenacted on the playground. I feel more connected to these films than ever thanks to him. And if you encouragingly ask Armen to explain what scene he is acting out, he looks at you suspiciously (probably coming to the conclusion that you are a dangerous Sith Lord), and zips away down the running track, holding his invisible light saber at his side like a true Jedi warrior.

I have many friends from my classroom who love nature. They love it so much that they are constantly bringing it into my classroom. And leaving it to crawl all over the room while they are off doing who knows what. From snails to bugs to rocks, my classroom is ever in excess of the outdoors. I don’t often feel the urge to go outside these days - most of the playground is now on my classroom floor.

I won’t even get into kids who lick my hands, eat the clothes I’m wearing and cough into my mouth on a daily basis...

But the one odd thing that my kids do is an act universal across all cultures - the urge to eat really weird combinations of things. This urge has no bounds, be it age or race or creed. Everyone, and I mean everyone, whether they act on it or not, has the urge to try the disgusting. But the odd food combinations aren’t what bother me. I can take my friend Linita topping her piece of sushi with a cookie and yoghurt. I can handle my friend Banker drenching his stir fried noodles in soy sauce and ketchup and eating it like it’s the first meal he’s had in days. Bring on the weird.

The thing that gets to me is the butter fascination. And this is not the “I-like-to-slather-my-bread-with-as-much-butter-as-possible” kind of thing. This is the “I-just-plain-like-to-eat-butter-out-of-the-packet.” Let me simplify: Fork. Butter. Eat. Gross.

My kids can’t get enough of it. They take packets of butter by the handful. They try to sneak it out to recess. It’s the first thing they down at lunch time. And it’s not just a handful of my kids. Almost simultaneously, I can look down the lunch table and watch as half of my kids happily open their butter packets, stick their forks in and chow down. The butter eaters.

When they finally realized how much this grossed me out, it only spurned them on, and so for two months, I was faced with the constant picture of kids chewing butter to their heart’s content and smiling at me with their butter-stained teeth…

Ah, first grade.