So I was teaching a lesson on the past participle "have been to..." to my elementary 3 class when all of a sudden Quan, a gregarious and goofy student, chimes in...
Quan: Jessica, you are very fat.
Me: What?
Quan: You are very fat.
Me: Quan, that's not nice.
Quan: I'm sorry, but it's true.
Me: That's just not very nice.
Quan: In Vietnam the word fat means healthy.....and not beautiful.
Me: Ok, so I'm very fat, healthy, and not beautiful?
Class: Laughs
Ngoc (a really sweet girl who sits in the front): No, no, no....not very fat.
I've heard other teachers say that their students have called them fat and I understand that Vietnam's concept of overweight is a lot different than that of the States, but that still kinda stung.
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