The Korean Salsa Dancing Phenomenon

When I decided to attempt living in an Asian country for a year, there were a lot of things I expected. For example, I knew I’d be eating a lot of rice and I knew I’d be eating it with chopsticks. That was a given. There are things about living in Korea though that I could not have foreseen. The disorganization and lack of communication and planning ahead are a few of the more annoying things that have caught me off guard. The unbelievable competitiveness is also something I wasn’t ready for, but I’m not sure if anything has blindsided me as much as the Korean salsa dancing phenomenon. More on that in a little bit.

 

I know I promised some of you an update on the techniques of Rosetta Stone in trying to learn a new language, but to be totally honest, I just have really slacked off in using it. Every time I do get on there, I finish a lesson and feel pretty good about it, but then won’t get on for another couple of weeks. I’m finding the Korean language in general very difficult to speak/understand. Like I’ve mentioned before, I’ve got the Korean alphabet down. You want me to read you something in Korean, no problem. You want me to tell you what it means, problem. Unless of course it's an English word they’ve written out in Korean, like 맥도날드, which is McDonald’s. Anyway, the Korean language really seems to take a great deal of effort to say some of the simplest things. A great example of this is the first word you learn, “hello.” In Korean, it’s pronounced “an-young-ha-say-yo.” That’s where you start! Another element that makes this language difficult is that there’s just about two ways to say everything! One of the funniest things I think is that there’s even two different ways to say something is delicious. One for when you’re with your friends, and another for when you’re with elders or someone of a superior status than you. Getting back to Rosetta Stone, I think it works well, it just takes dedication to sticking with it. I guess that’s like most things though. Except kimchi. No matter how much I try to stick with eating it and getting used to it, let alone enjoy it, I just can’t get passed the taste of poo it leaves in my mouth.

 

I’m sure most of you have read or heard about all the craziness going on up north of me these days. I continue to follow the news everyday for the latest updates, which is really the only way you’d know that stuff is happening. South Koreans really don’t seem to have much of a reaction to it. A lot of the news and talk here lately has been dominated by the suicide of the former president, which just occurred last week. It’s still amazing to me though that they seem oblivious to North Korea. I actually asked my co-teacher if she or any of her friends are worried about North Korea’s actions and the way she said no was like it was the dumbest question I could have asked. I don’t know, I figure that when a country you’re still technically at war with conducts a nuclear test and starts test-firing missiles, you get a little nervous. Apparently not.

 

Everything at school is going good these days. I mentioned the classroom behavior issues that the elementary school students here have and I believe I have found a solution. Like I mentioned before, Koreans are very competitive. It's almost instinctual or something. Whether it's playing sports or a simple game of rock, paper, scissors, Koreans get into it and they mean business. There doesn't even have to be anything at stake. They just want to win. So, I decided to use this characteristic as a way to improve classroom behavior. I've started a competition for the month of June that pits the fifth and sixth grade classes against each other and the third and fourth grade classes against each other. I won't get into the details of how the competition works, but basically they have to pay attention, participate, keep the classroom clean and do good on their tests to win. Now, it's only been two days, but so far they're making me look like a genius. Never have our classes been so under control as they have been the last two days. I talked to the students all about teamwork as well, and how they have to get on each other about doing their work and telling other students in class to stop talking or to pay attention. It's great. They are totally policing themselves, because the majority of students want to win. There are of course those few who don't care, but the other students are on them so much that they don't have much of a choice. Now like I said, it's only been two days, so I'm really hoping this keeps up throughout the rest of the month. I did tell them that the winning class would get a special prize from America and that seemed to get them even more excited about it, so maybe that will keep them going. Now, I just have to figure out what that special prize is going to be. If I show up with American flag pins and yellow No. 2 pencils at the end of the month, they're never going to listen to me again.

Speaking of my students, I have to say that no matter what teachers say, they have favorites. I'm speaking from experience now. I am not going to deny that there are kids in each of my classes that I like more than others. In fact, there's even a couple students that come hang out with me in the English classroom when they're done with school for the day. This past Friday was no exception, so I decided to take the opportunity to film a couple of them speaking some English to you all. As soon as I pulled out my camera, they were all excited and wanted me to film them doing other things too, like dancing and even a strange little skit they put together on the spot. Anyway, while we were hanging out, for some reason, they started this little chant of my name, "Robert Teacher." Well because I'm a goof, or a fool, whichever you prefer, I started doing this dumb little dance to it and they got excited and wanted to film me doing it. They even directed me to start the dance crouched down and then rise up as they were chanting. So it's included in the video below as well. I'm already regretting my decision to include it, so you all better appreciate what I'm giving you here!

On Saturday night, Brent and I were invited to our friends' place for dinner. We met this couple a while back, through Soo of course, and have hung out with them on a few occasions. In fact, they came with us to see Star Trek when it first came out, which by the way is a great movie that I've seen three times now and recommend all of you to go see if you haven't yet. So anyway, we went to their place Saturday night and enjoyed some good homemade Korean cuisine, which included bulgogi. When there is bulgogi you really can't go wrong. Now, as we're finding out, almost anytime you go to someone's home for dinner, or even out to dinner sometimes, you're likely to meet more people. It's just the way it is here. This night was no different and Brent and I were introduced to two new friends. Both girls spoke English very well and one of them actually had a bit of a British accent. It was really intriguing to listen to her slip in and out of it when she was speaking English. Some things she would say with the American accent and some things she would say with the British accent, but her transitions were so seamless it was amazing. Well anyway she, like many other Koreans, enjoys salsa dancing. Honestly, she is about the fourth or fifth Korean we've come across that salsa dances. We even went to Ji Won's friend's salsa dance lesson once to watch her, her sister and a bunch of other Koreans practice salsa dancing. Too funny. So after dinner, she wanted to go to a salsa bar to dance and asked us all if we wanted to come. Brent and I agreed as long as we weren't going to be forced to dance with her. You could tell that disappointed her a little, but she accepted and we all went.

The salsa bar itself was this tiny little place that really didn't feel latin at all, except of course for the music playing and the dancing. There was actually even like a faux disco ball in the center of the place even though the lights were completely on. It wasn't dark at all. As I stood there watching I mentioned to Brent how the scene in front of me really should have been a lot funnier than I was reacting to it. I mean seriously. Here I am in this makeshift salsa bar, with dozens of Koreans salsa dancing to latin music in the middle of Busan, South Korea. I mean really, picture it. I should have been LOLing or ROFLing or whatever else you cool kids text each other these days. I'm afraid that maybe I've been here long enough now that I'm getting immune to things like this, so they're not as funny anymore. What a shame. Anyway, we stayed here for maybe 20-30 minutes and then called it a night. Our friend stayed longer though and salsa danced the night away.

On Sunday, Brent and I set out for Haeundae because there was a sand festival happening last weekend and we wanted to check it out. Well, to be totally honest, the real reason we went to Haeundae was because our friend Ashley told us about this burrito place over there and we were "sanchezing" for some burritos. ("sanchezing" makes more sense than "jonesing," don't you think?) The sand festival was going to be a bonus. Unfortunately our attempts to get in touch with Ashley to either go with us or give us directions to the burrito place were failing, so we arrived at Haeundae in real danger of not getting the chance to have a burrito. Lucky for us, she answered her phone right as we arrived at the subway station and was able to correctly guide us to Taco Senora. When we got there, there was a line out the door of foreigners, obviously the clientele that keep this place in business. While waiting, Brent and I were forced to endure small talk with another American, who felt that because we looked alike we needed to be friends. Now sometimes this is okay when the person turns out to be really cool, but this was not one of those times. This guy was a tool and we couldn't wait for him to get his food and get out of there. Brent made the very funny observation that if this were at some burrito stand back home, this guy would have never come over and started talking to us, but because we're here, all of a sudden there's this solidarity between us. Ugh. So after dealing with him and waiting for a good 20 minutes, we finally reached the inside and ordered our burritos. There's just one Korean lady there making the food, which is why we had to wait so long, but she did a pretty good job. The burritos were great and there's no doubt we'll be back for seconds. Hopefully the tool from Olympia, Washington who knows Kevin Bacon's nephew will stay home that day.

The sand festival itself was okay. The atmosphere on the beach was definitely more fun and lively than the last couple times we had visited Haeundae. There was music, sand castles, face painting and food. The sand castles weren't too impressive, but some were pretty funny. You'll see some pictures below. I think this kind of gave us an idea of what Haeundae might be like during the summer, which would be real cool. Our previous impressions left us not thinking much of the Korean summer hotspot. Though I have a feeling I'll be frequenting the beach by myself or with my Korean friends most of the time, because of Brent's ongoing war with the sun. 

Well, I see that North Korea is ready to launch another three to four medium range missiles here in the coming days. I better go somewhere and not care like everyone else.

Take care!