Funny Stuff

So, at the beginning of every class I pass around a beach ball, and "randomly" stop this song in order to select students for brief three sentence interviews. The kids roar with laughter when the music stops and I get a deer-in-headlights look from the young girl or boy holding the beach ball. I don't know if this would be hilarious in Canada, but it works like a charm as an icebreaker in Korea. Then, I ask, "What is your name?", "What do you like?", and say "Nice to meet you." The student knows the answer for the first question, but isn't always able to put it into a sentence. Half the time the student stumbles on the second question, maybe he half gets it and says "computer game." Often the student fails to respond to respond to the third sentence with "Nice to meet you too," despite the hounding of my co-teacher.

My favourite response to the "What do you like?" question came this week, when a cute little girl answered, "I like dog babies!" This has had Joanne and me laughing all week.

Later on, I ask the students to write "Something Special About Me." It is rare for the students to know the word 'special' so I have to explain it to them. I say:

"What is different about you? What do you like about yourself? I am special because I am very tall and I like running. Some girls say 'I am very very very very beautiful' (all the girls laugh at this), some boys say I am a 'pro-gamer' (there are Korean teenagers who make a living playing video games), some say 'I am very smart,' 'good at soccer' or 'I have nice friends.'"

Some kids balk at the question and write "I don't no" or "There is no thing special about me." But other times I get really amusing gems. I wish I could remember them all. Here are a few:

"My fat."
"I going up a tree very well."
"I have very many freckles."
"I want to be a UN Ambassador."
"I have black hair."
"I am a long hair."
"punching"
"I'm small."
"I like meets" (for their favourite food).

Today a girl came to English Town wearing a hoodie that was rather amusing. It had a smiling monkey in a tub of "Monkey Wax." Underneath it was the text, "Polish your monkey every day," "Banana Flavoured," with the footer "Give your monkey the buffing he deserves." In a different context, this would be considered lewd. But few people know anything about innuendo in Korea.

Earlier in the week, we saw a girl with a cartoon of a pig on her shirt, beside text that said "I love pig" and surrounded by multiple inscriptions of "yummy" on all sides. In Korea, people advertise food with cartoons of the food looking hungry. So pork restaurants have pigs licking their lips, cows have cows licking their lips, and little girls wear cute cartoons of animals advertising their favourite food.