SOS Please Someone Sext Me

An Example of Student Scrabble Time

Fridays are game day.  These kids study from 9am until 9pm so they need a break at some point during the week.  I extend this attitude towards my university students as well and they love me for it!  It was the second week with my class of adorable university girls when I broke out the scrabble board because it was such a big hit the week before.  My rules are that the words must be at least 3 letters (preferably 4), the students are allowed to use a dictionary, and that they have to use the word in a full sentence.  This setup provides an “educational” reason for playing games in the classroom. 

Well those girls definitely used those dictionaries.  They came up with words that I had never heard of including xylose and xylene.  We also introduced a new rule that stated you could layer letters on top of one another to create a new word.  For example, train could become plain.  Well one of the girls decided to layer an S where an N used to be. The result…Son became SOS and Next became Sext.  Well she found it in an online dictionary but the definition didn’t make sense to her so it was up to me to explain what this word meant.  The best I could come up with in simple English was that when you message someone on the phone this is called a text.  When a text is sent between lovers (a popular term over here) and involves anything to do with sex (and then I pointed to the core part of the word sext) then it is called a sext.  I continued on stating that this could be a message with words or pictures.  Very confused looks soon turned into shocked faces and rapid-fire Korean talk between the three of them.  And that was the end of the class.

Then came the fun part of telling my coworkers what had happened.  Of course the English teachers understood what had happened but the Korean teachers were confused and even more confused when they searched for the definition with their handy-dandy electric dictionary.  Apparently sext is a catholic ritual of some sort and the teachers weren’t catching on to the humour of the situation.  And so it was once again up to me to explain to my much senior, male coworker what sexting really meant.  In a country where I get minimal english interaction, I have to get my kicks anywhere possible. That means that it was awkward for him but hilarious for me!  My good friend Murphy has sent much worse my way in the past so nothing fazes me these days…