A Giant of a Tale.

Greetings

Continuing on with the subject of school I thought I would share with you some of my students' work from the past week. But before I begin I want to tell you about my new Korean name. A few posts ago I told you how we are often given the task of assigning English names. Well, the children thought that it was only fair that I should be given a Korean name in return.

The process took several days and after much hemming and hawing they came up with the name Choi Hong Man (pronounced Che Hong Mun). I knew that the specificness of the name meant that it had to have some sort of special meaning (as I was just expecting a name like Byoung Gu or Dong Duk.) It turns out that they named me after a famous Korean Kickboxer. The students know that I love martial arts and since I'm always talking about it in class it was a natural fit.

In my mind I saw this....


I imagined some great Asian fighter like the fabulous Sakuraba (who although Japanese, allows you to understand what I was imagining). Instead, I later found out that when my students think of me they see this....



Ahhh, good old Choi Hong Man. He's 7'2" and over 400 pounds. He's the current K1 champion but he's considered to be somewhat of a freak. Everything about this guy is gigantic and on his best days he might be considered ruggedly passable but probably far from handsome. He certainly won't be starring in any Korean Romance movies anytime soon.

So when it comes down to it the students think I'm the Korean version of Andre the Giant. Haha, I can live with that. It's better than being the Korean version of Rosanne Arnold or something.

Wanting to risk further abuse I asked the children to draw everyone in the class including myself.

I've posted a few of the best ones and hope you enjoy them as much as we did.



Here's a great one that really depicts my hairy arms and legs. The Koreans seem to lack the ability to amass colonies of hair on their limbs and often they walk up to inspect my hair. I think that they want to see if it's real or not but let me tell you that strangers walking up and rubbing your arms can be a bit...well...strange, scary, annoying, creepy, and did I mention strange?


Here's a great one that really gives me an Italian vibe. I kind of look like Tony Danza or John Travolta before the weight or crazy religion. My favorite part is that I'm wearing red pants and a pink shirt and seemed to have shaved off one of my eyebrows. Hmm, this version of me definitely needs a rush visit to the set of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.



What teacher doesn't dream of being depicted standing on a student's head with his/her arms raised in victory? I could probably spend weeks analyzing this picture but instead I'm going to put it on my wall so I can admire its coolness each and every day.



This kid didn't mess around. He didn't waste time drawing a hairy person and instead cut to the chase with a beautiful rendition of me as King Kong. I even appear to have one of the students in my hand (possibly it's the young artist himself, who often finds himself in trouble in the class).



This one's pretty cool and thankfully it doesn't depict me as hairy or a blood thirsty killer. The lifelike image also captures the fact that the spelling of "brother" has always eluded me. My shame is now available for all of the world to see.



This one was by far my favorite. This is what happened when the version of me above visited the set of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Look at that hair and my hip green t-shirt, I'm styling and profiling at the same time. This was done by a 12 year old girl and although she made my nose half the size of my face it's the first time I have ever been drawn as an elf and think it's definetly a look that works for me.

Much like the sand in an hour glass, these are the days of our lives.

Cheers

Shayne