The Best Stories You Will Ever Read

I had my sophomore classes do my version of the Story Chain activity and these are the utterly strange results. And, since most of these stories do reference Korean culture so I'll try to footnote the most interesting/important ones.

Class M's Story:

In New Caledonia, Shrek is so sexy.[yes as in the green ogre from the movie] Gu Jun Pyo* was kissing Fiona. They are sleeping. They have a baby. She divorces Shrek and is alone with the donkey. Gu Jun Pyo killed the donkey. "Um," said F4,"no, no, no Jun Pyo." Then Gu Jun Pyo said "Gee, gee, gee."** Finally F4 goes crazy and goes to a club. Suddenly, surprisingly, F4 sees Jessica*** and begins hunting her. So then Jessica and F4 go on a honeymoon. Fiona goes to Manhatten with her daughter, Gandhi [yes, that Ghandi]. Ghandi is a pretty girl. Ghandi learns cooking and cooks a dog for Fiona. F4 is playing "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot!" with Jessica and Gu Jun Pyo wins. Jessica lost so she must leave the F4. Ghandi is a genius at cooking and goes to Mississippi for a cooking contest. Shrek looks for Fiona and Jessica meets Ghandi in Mississippi and the fall in love and get married and they go to Sydney. The F4, still on the honeymoon, meet another beautiful girl named Tiffany****. For the night Tiffany wears a dress. This is the legend of New Caledonia, said Paris Hilton.

I couldn't make this up if I tried. Best part? The students realizing too late that they had made Jessica and Ghandi a lesbian couple but I said to them "why not? women can love each other too." They still seemed slightly distressed. Let's just say many Koreans seem to not yet be comfortable with the idea that they may actually know people who are gay or lesbian. It seems acceptable as long as it's a character in a movie or someone they don't know (a recently popular movie here was about gay bakery shop workers).

Handy References:
*Gun Jun Pyo= leader of the oh-so-stylish F4 in the drama "Boys Over Flowers" (꽃보다 남자), a sort of rich gang who control the rich high they attend. They're also the most desirable men in Korea and Gu Jun Pyo the most desirable because he is the richest. (He's also tall and handsome which can't hurt either). He's also a total jerk on the outside but is all sensitive on the inside (sound familiar?). For a pretty good summary of the story of the drama and the characters, go here. Also, New Caledonia is one of the places the F4 go to in the drama for a vacay.

**"Gee, Gee, Gee" was the hottest single by Korean girls pop group, Girls' Generation for a long while (still kinda popular now but slowly dying out, thank God). Yes there really are 9 members. Lord knows why since none of them are particularly talented.

***Jessica is one of the members of Girls' Generation. Also, according to my students, in Korean it's common to say a guy is "hunting" or chasing a girl so while it sounds kind of terrible in English they don't mean it in a violent way.

****Tiffany is also another member of Girls' Generation.

I'll update with more stories later.