asian pop stars

i'm watching the results show for "so you think you can dance" and the wondergirls are performing "nobody", which is still pretty darn catchy.

the only reason this merits a blog post was that on monday, i was walking by one of my 2nd graders and he was singing "i don't want nobody, nobody but you..." he's my super high functioning filipino austistic student and it was super cute and funny. then today, he's sitting in his square on the rug and punching the air declaring, "i'm manny" (pacquiao) in case you weren't sure who he was talking about. how much do i love that there's a filipino athlete for him to look up to? i just had his conference with his mom today and she was telling me how the night before, he was asking his dad who was better, manny pacquiao or john cena.

totally unrelated - the same student's mom was telling me that when he was little, he couldn't handle being out and around people, so they enrolled him in a social skills therapy class to help him. so now, they have the opposite problem. he talks to everybody. i guess his mom has a ton of relatives and so they were at the mall recently, and the kid walked up to some random vietnamese lady who he thought looked filipino and took her hand and greeted her (in some traditional filipino way, according to his mom). she had to apologize to the lady who was confused about why a random child grabbed her hand. his explanation, "i thought she was family."

going back to asian pop stars, specifically korean pop stars, i found out that one of my 4th grade students from last year was just signed to some 5 year recording contract with a korean record label. they're grooming her and sending her to tumbling classes, vocal classes, etc. and, in the contract, there's a surgery clause, as in if they want you to get some kind of plastic surgery, you have to do it. umm...she's 10 right now. so while it's awesome that she's so talented, i'm horrified at the thought that when she's deemed old enough, some person will tell her that she's not pretty enough and will then proceed to dictate that she must have plastic surgery. that is so disturbing.

t-minus 7 school days and counting until i am officially on vacation. vacation cannot come soon enough.