You're Number 2! You're Number 2!

Last night I went with three of my students to Pizza Hut. Fun. Maybe I'll have pictures to post here later. Scott has to email them to me.

Yesterday was funny. I've been teaching for a year, and groups come and go, it's not uncommon for me to get a question like this: "Theresa, who do you think is the best looking Korean guy here at the school?" This is a normal question to them, nothing inappropriate about it. Usually, it's girls who ask me, they ask all the teachers. I used to say, "Brad Pitt." and pretend that I don't understand English. That's what they do.

Well I got a surprise yesterday, because my studious quiet guy student was the one who started the survey, Jason. I had four options...out of Kuni, Peter, Jason and Scott who has the best face?Commonly they say "best face", or "good face"...then whoever is present will campaign for themselves. Scott is a strong lobbyist. The funny thing is that all the teachers were answering "Kuni.", like of course and they each answered quickly. "Kuni." So when I was asked, I did the exact same thing. Kuni is not my student, actually, so it was easy for me to say that and I knew that it would be a funny answer. Oh, these guys were MAD. Shouting, pointing, arguing with eachother. "WHY?", they questioned me.

So eventually they changed the question. Ok, Kuni aside, who's number two out of the remaining three? I said you're all number 2 (if ya know what I mean). I got shouted at and called a liar. Scott is not speaking to Grace anymore because she chose him as number 4.

The students also have strict category criteria for adjectives. Reading my blog entries for Konglish reveals this, I have one entry, ME: "Is he handsome?", STUDENT:"No, just good-looking." That's funny for native speakers, but Koreans have definite ideas about cute, handsome, good-looking, glamorous (you don't want to know this one), beautiful, etc.

One day my girl students told me that they had talked about it, and come to the conclusion that I like cute guys, but not handsome guys. I'm like, OK, I'll buy that. They said, for example, Brad Pitt. I said, no, I don't buy that because the thing with Brad is that he's cute and handsome and that's why he has such universal appeal. Kapiche? Ahh, yes.

That's what I'm here for, to educate.