My Students are Funny!

A few funny things from my students this week...

Hiroomi (pronounced Heeroh-ohmee) was wearing a t-shirt with the following phrases on it in a nice cursive font. "What oneself should do. Meaning of knowing it." What?! What is that? We actually see a lot of people wearing shirts with bizarre English phrases on them that make no sense. Pretty much like all the shirts that Americans wear with Chinese or Japanese characters on them and have no idea what they mean.

Saki, one of my favorite students, is at my school to take classes about 3-4 days a week. She is 20 and lots of fun to have in class. She thinks a lot of the things I say are funny, even if I don't mean them to be. We were doing a lesson on talking about lifestyles (reclusive, lavish, cosmopolitan) and I asked them to tell me how their lifestyles are different from 5 years ago. Saki started by saying that her lifestyle is better now because she just turned 20 this year and so she can drink. (In Japan the legal drinking age is 20) She then says "yes, drinking, it is fun for me!" Yes, I guess that is one way of putting it. :-)

Then today another student of mine, Yongho, had me almost rolling on the floor. To set the scene, it is Yongho (about 40 ish), Yu (17), and Mana (16). I was doing a lesson on describing appearances. I asked them to think of their favorite movie star and to describe how they look and then the others try and guess who it is.

Yongho: "He is short. He has brown hair. He is about 40."
Emma: "How would you describe his build? Is he big, skinny..."
Yongho: "He is tight."
Emma: "Ok, we don't usually use 'tight' to describe how you look...unless you are a rapper. How about 'fit' or 'toned'?"
Yongho: "Yes, yes, fit"
Emma: "Ok Yu, Mana, do you know who Yongho is describing?"
Mana: "Johnny Depp?"
Yu: "I don't know."
Yongho: "No...........Michael J. Fox."
Emma: Bursts out laughing along with Yu and Mana.
Yongho: "What?? He is handsome and my favorite!"
Emma: "No, nothing wrong at all! That was just the LAST person I was expecting you to say. I was expecting some Japanese star that I didn't know."

How hilarious is that? So then Yongho talked about how Back to the Future is her favorite movie and I agreed that it was awesome. What was then depressing is that Yu and Mana did not know who he was because they were born AFTER Back to the Future came out. Wow that makes me feel old!