are these the moments that are supposed to keep you smiling?

So it's hard not to like my LOUDEST, most OUT of control class when they say stuff like this to me...

At the end of class today, as an "exit ticket," students had to make one sentence, "I am thankful for..."

Students one-by-one said these to my face...
"I am thankful for your smile"
"I am thankful for you"
"I am thankful for your beauty"

Hard to stay mad at them.

A Korean "Hot issue" (named after a kpop song, but now used as a reference for popular news), that this class also cued me into is "Loser."

Apparently there's a featuring beautiful foreign and Korean women get together to talk about stuff. on TV. That's it. "Chitchat of the beautiful ladies" is the translated title. A girl from Hongik University got on the show and called all short guys, "Losers." This caused an uproar and had one person suing the Korean Broadcasting Station for 10,000,000 won for emotional damage.

So, of course, when I put on a Futurama episode last week, several of the classes laughed hysterically when Fry is looking for a golden bottle cap in a pop can (a la charlie and the chocolate factory looking for the golden ticket), and the bottom of the can says, "You're a loser."

This "hot issue" may even be more dramatic than I thought. I had some of the boys' in this same class honestly bemoaning that they were "losers" because they weren't tall enough. This somewhat shallow classification of all men shorter than average is even more troubling when I see how it's not only recently affected my students, but my adult, female Korean friends here.

My coteachers are looking for husbands, or at least boyfriends. They want someone handsome, with a good job (only doctor or teacher), close location, and tall. While at first glance, these seem like acceptable guidelines. But REQUIREMENTS? Would you really give up the greatest guy because he was only a doctor in residency and not a full-fledged doctor? Or a man who's perfect for you in every way, but he's an inch or two shorter than you? In reality, shouldn't each woman have her own different criteria? I mean, a tall man to a short woman, could still be average male height. How does everyone possibly have the SAME criteria? What sort of brain-washing tv show or crazy homogeneity gene is streamlining all women's criteria for men?

Maybe i'm too biased, since I seem lucky enough to have ended up with a tall, handsome, computer engineer-to-be boyfriend that also treats me right (sorry to brag). But I still wonder if the outsiders' observations of Korea being overly image-obsessed holds some truth. I know, I know. How could it get any worse than America with its scantily clad models on billboards and elementary school children dieting? Maybe I can just reflect, that like so many other aspects of comparing cultures, it's the same, but different.